


SBURB Classes Beginner Guide

by LostDeep



Series: RVAU: Vaulted Vigil [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Replay Value, SBURB Guide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-25 16:54:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 35
Words: 37,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14382951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostDeep/pseuds/LostDeep
Summary: Enjoying your new title? Have any idea what your class does? No? Yeah I understand that. Maybe this will help.





	1. Preamble-Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> This work does rely on the reader understanding the basics behind the Replay Value AU. Sorry, newcomers. If you haven't seen the legendary [Sburb Glitch FAQ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/340777/chapters/551606), I'd recommend it.

Classes Beginner Guide: The Royal Court (2.3) by vaultedVigil

#  **Introduction**

A lot of new players to Sburb find the various class guides and find themselves confused. The mix of polarity, duties, stats, and ‘verber of aspect’ descriptors often confuse the first-time victims, and I often find myself saying to them ‘just do what your class sounds like it does, and you will be fine’.

The details of role-playing modifiers and unbreakable unions still commonly need to be explained and detailed, but until then I find most players work fine by just doing what it seems like they should do. And recently, I’ve been thinking about that.

I recalled on a title analysis thread some time back, someone posting a ‘classes are literally meant to play the roles that the class would play in a royal court’ theory: A Knight is literally supposed to be a knight, acting as the court’s protector and errand boy. An Heir is literally like the king’s or prince’s heir: a lot of power and responsibility is handed to him. A Prince is like Machiavelli’s Prince: he’s a combatant, who controls his court and leads his men in battle. Obviously, the theory had holes in it the size of tanker ships and it faded into obscurity. But then, when I found myself telling someone ‘You are a WITCH, working outside the system is what you DO’ I realized that there was, perhaps, some merit to it.

So I’ve pondered, drafted, and re-worked that half a theory and dug into the various class guides, and I think I might have something useful. This is intended for players who are either playing Sburb for the first time, or are playing a class for the first time. Or perhaps people that simply don’t ‘get’ the official class designators listed in the dream moon libraries, or dug up from datamining. Hopefully this guide will give you what you need to know to start, or a basis on which you can look at other more serious guides to actually gain solid information. A first step to understanding the hell you’ve been placed in.

Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to locate the original post and don’t remember the handle of the original poster. Suffice to say I cannot take this entirely by my own credit, and if someone could help me hunt down the original poster so I can properly credit them, I would appreciate it.

Addendum: I’ve recently been informed that my hosting method is a bit wide-range, resulting in some issues. As a result I’ve taken out the statistic listings and replaced them with a ‘Sburb Versions’ section.

Addendum 2: As mentioned in the version notes, which no one can see, the hosting server I’m using has terrible temporal coding, and as a result certain parts of this Guide are not available in all timespace stamps. The table of contents and version notes in particular is only available sometime in 1992 for some reason. Why 1992? Sburb wasn’t even a thing yet back then. I have a friend much better at timetrav encryption than I am on the matter, for now you’ll just have to trawl back and forth on the timeline to get them all. You could also possibly wait for the chapter you want, but I won’t promise they’ll all get to you in your lifetime.


	3. Preamble-How Titles Are Assigned

#  **The Class Guides**

The core of these guides is a mix of roleplaying guidelines and mechanical trends to help you understand your class and your role in your Sburb session. The new players among you likely looked at ‘roleplaying’ and were confused. For a full explanation, please refer to the Sburb Glitch FAQ. Yes, I’m going to be pointing you there a lot. No, I have no desire to cut down on references. In short, when you’re acting in a way that Sburb decides is in line with your class and aspect, it gives you a boost. If it decides that you’re not doing so, you don’t get a thing. If it decides you’re actively being a terrible class of aspect, it nerfs you so hard that a particularly rambunctious miniature Pomeranian could likely beat you in a fight, much less whatever you’re reacting to. As a result, ‘role playing’ as your class becomes very important. The basics are shaky and the details of the system are counter-intuitive, but I generally find that the best way to do things is to just go at it from the angle of ‘I’m a (class), what would a literal (thing your class is named after) do in this situation?’ 

This is, my experience, generally easier your first session. Why? I think it’s a matter of that first session being tailored to you, that first title is yours, and ultimately it’s the one you’re going to understand the most. This is because of the method of giving out titles. 

#  **How Titles are Assigned**

The logic behind why who gets what title is a hot debate in the community. A popular theory is that you’re given a title that challenges you, but I don’t think that entirely holds water. Sometimes someone takes to a title like they always knew it was their place, and they’ve only just now been told about the words for it. This most often happens with Heirs, and is part of why they’re a little insufferable on occasion. Ultimately, then, I think the logic behind the first title you’re given is that it’s your greatest potential. 

When you’re given that first title, it’s because Sburb has looked at you, and all the titles, and decided that your best, most ideal place, where you will have the most impact will be this title. It’s what you ultimately will aspire to, the most of what you could accomplish. There is, of course, problems with this assignment. Of course there is, this is Sburb, built on bad ideas and ~ATH code. The problem with this assignment is twofold: 

  1. This is what Sburb thinks you’re best at, and it doesn’t care if you think otherwise. If you’re an outspoken pacifist with adamant will and strong conviction? Sburb sees the will and conviction as good Knight qualities and the pacifism as a character flaw you’ll have to overcome. 
  2. This is what you have the most potential in, what you COULD achieve the most in… not what you WILL achieve. For example, Sburb loves to hand the Page title out to poor souls with little to nothing, no skills or confidence, because it believes that they can do great things! Then it proceeds to stomp on their face, because it gave someone with no existing power the single worst early-game class, and they die horribly. Sure, in theory their ideal achievements would be to become the all-powerful page, but in effect they would have gotten more done if handed literally any other class. 



In short: Sburb knows what’s best, and if you think differently up yours, go die in a pit. 

The end effect, however, is generally that your first title is a little instinctive. Maybe not entirely, and you’re not likely to hit the peak power, but you’re not going to have to turn your brain upside-down just to get the basics. For many players, overthinking will be a sizeable obstacle. 

Thankfully, the system seems to calm down on replays. When you do a replay, you’re allegedly given the title of the player you’re replacing, but sometimes that rings really hollow, or it’s not even clear whether you’re replacing a player or if Sburb just paradox’d you into place. A theory that’s gaining some traction is that sburb gives you a title that the game needs, compromised with the ‘your potential’ nonsense from above. This is part of why you always seem to be the lynchpin of an otherwise all-newbie party: Sburb looked at the group and specifically grabbed what would help most. However, this means that replay titles care less about who you are and more about what you have to do, making them harder to just step into like you did with your first title. 

Of course, all said and done, how titles are assigned doesn’t matter. If you wind up a replayer, you’re eventually going to get a title you HATE. If you do that, I’d recommend looking up an advanced alchemy guide: the proper alchemical cheese will carry you through your base planet arc, at least, and from there you’ll just have to hope that the game ends soon. No matter how many guides you pursue, if you hate your title, if it runs counter to how you think and what you know, you’re going to not be good at it. 

Addendum: the ‘proper alchemical cheese’ was a joke, but it turns out that if you combine any gourmet cheese with a weapon, it increases it one weapon tier to a maximum of epic. For cheap, too. Weird. 

Addendum Addendum: If you combine a gourmet cheese with a legendary weapon you just get legendary cheese. Stop asking me. 


	3. Preamble-Sburb Versions

#  **Sburb Versions**

As I have been playing Sburb, a sizable issue has reared its head: The more games of sburb you play, the more likely you are to cross Sburb Versions. This is why people often find that their information contradicts what is given in GodsGiftToGrinds’s Glitch FAQ: The version that GG frequents is not the same as yours, or you’ve drifted out of that version. Trying to figure out what version you’re in is an effort in futility (recent datamining implies that each session of Sburb might be its own version) and both small and big things can change. 

Small things include the stat modifiers for aspects or classes (A fair chunk of your stats are randomly generated, and the variations don’t tend to change too much), the pre-programmed powers for the Aspects, the exact generation algorithms for various things, a few NPC variables, the names of various stats and values, and the like. Nothing huge, but enough that it can mess up a carefully-laid plan based on information from an FAQ. 

One of the more important minor changes is alchemy details, specifically how well it deals with food. Sometimes alchemized food is just bland no matter what, sometimes it comes through fine but with a few foibles, such as using a generic marinade instead of the one you home-made. For the most part, the biggest problem with food in Sburb is that things alchemized default to room temperature, and as a result need to be heated or chilled. Some blatantly refrigerated things (like milk and butter) occasionally come through cool, but whether it works and at what temperature seems to depend on the version. However, the temperature rule doesn’t apply to things that are specifically at a certain temperature, namely frozen things like frozen dinners. Also, occasionally things that are spicy enough to have ‘hot’ in their name are alchemized piping hot. So, good news for the spice fans out there. For more information, see muteCebu’s sburb cooking guide. 

Addendum: it turns out that if you get a REALLY good cook in your session, good enough that the food they make is named ‘(their name)’s original (food)’ or the like, it will be alchemized perfectly. Perfect taste, perfect temperature, perfectly seasoned. This tends to drive the player in question insane because there’s no LOVE or ART in it. 

Addendum 2: There is no version in which Sburb alchemizes ice cream properly. It always comes out as room-temperature sludge. 

Large changes can include which aspects and classes are available, which NPCs exist within the code, the existence of a Debug NPC, and how much control Sburb has over your mind. 

Overall, however, there seems to be certain ‘Sets’ of big changes that go together, like Sburb is a modular set-up where things can be taken out and put in at will. I think it’s a mix of patches, expansion packs, and DLC, but it’s impossible to tell since no one has yet to find a Sburb install options page. Here’s some examples of expansion sets, and then I’ll tell you why it matters.

##  **Set 1: Maturity Quests and Psy-Buffs**

Something that features in the Sburb glitch FAQ is the effects of Psy-Buffs and Maturity Quests. These caught me off-guard, because I have never noticed a power listed as a Psy-buff in my playthroughs, and the maturity quests I went on never seemed to have the manipulative quality that is described in the FAQ. Near as I can tell, these are connected: this version of Sburb just has more controls in your head, and both uses them itself and gives them to other players. My condolences to the victims in this version, you suffer a special hell among hells. 

##  **Set 2: Expanded Classes**

The Sburb Glitch FAQ lists a number of rare classes, and near as I can tell they all go together in a single expansion, which re-balances the class setup to accommodate them. I don’t have much experience with these, yet, and as a result they are not included in this guide at this time. 

There also appears to be multiple expanded class sets, though, and each one is balanced a little differently. I’m not sure if there’s any ‘full set’ of classes, some of them seem mutually exclusive. To my knowledge, the ‘core’ set of classes are Thief, Rogue, Page, Heir, Knight, Sylph, Witch, Mage, Prince, Bard, Seer, and Maid. 

Addendum: Apparently the variable in the player data that determines which class you’re assigned is a LONG. Meaning there is a maximum of 4,294,967,296 possible classes. Why this is set up like this is beyond me, by raw the variable will never go above 12 and never 0 or below.

##  **Set 3: Expanded Aspects**

The Sburb Glitch FAQ also lists a number of rare aspects, which I suspect are also a single expansion. And I know for a fact that there is at least one different aspect expansion, too, because I’ve played in a few games with different additional aspects. What I find peculiar is that there’s overlap: the Glitch FAQ expansion has Flesh, whereas the expansion I’m familiar with has Clay, both of which are about change, specifically attached to life. In addition, the Glitch FAQ expansion has Sound and my expansion has Voice, and near as I can tell they do they exact same thing. 

The core aspects seem to be Light, Heart, Breath, Void, Blood, Space, Life, Doom, Hope, Rage, Mind, and Time. 

Addendum: There’s some question as to whether Time is a core aspect. Which seems weird to me because Sburb relies on time stuff so hard, there’s no way the game would work without it being core. 

Addendum Addendum: apparently Time is a core aspect, but is disabled for certain sessions in which temporal nonsense will happen without the need of a Time player. I have only been in one session like this, suffice to say it was far from the most unusual thing about that session and Time should never be deactivated in a human session. 

Addendum 2: Like the class value, the aspect value in player data is a LONG. Again, this strikes me as utterly unnecessary. However, it seems that Void’s value is 0. Interesting, that. 

Addendum 3: Certain aspect expansions can introduce a bug that can cause a player to not get assigned an aspect. If you get a title that is a class with no ‘of (aspect)’, you’re going to need to do some of the aspect-changing exploits to get one. Thankfully, it should be easier for you than any other player. Unthankfully, said exploits do not seem to be connected to the expansions that cause this issue, or any particular version set at all. Good luck. 

Addendum 3 Addendum: Sometimes players of Void will also have no ‘of Aspect’ in their title, but it’s usually easy to tell you’re the void player from the amount of bugs. Seriously, if you know what to look for, the person who is playing Void is really obvious even before a session starts just from the sheer number of things about them that make no sense. In addition, Void players will unlock Aspect abilities and Aspect-less players will not, typically making this bug clear as day in the early game. 

##  **Set 4: Plot Expansions**

Terraforming is the basic arc of Sburb, and once it is done the final confrontation can be started. All of the various arcs that come after that are some kind of added, optional content. These are each attached with certain bugs and exploits, and seem more likely to be along side certain other sets. Unfortunately, nothing is sure, even the order of operations: I once played a game where the Earthsea Borealis was skipped altogether and the game jumped to the underground arc. If you want to know more, you’ll have to hunt down a dedicated Sburb version FAQ, I’m just listing these changes here for the sake of completeness.

##  **Set 5: Fashion**

There seems to be at least one expansion connected entirely to fashion, expanding the styles for Carapacian clothing and dream pajamas, and allowing limited customization of God Hoodies. This may or may not be connected to the Tailor quests, and God Hoodie customization may or may not be a bug. Oddly, I’ve only ever seen the artillery variant of the skaian siege engine in games with expanded fashion, and I’m not comfortable saying it’s connected but at the very least it’s a disturbingly reliable correlation. 

##  **Why it Matters in the Context of This Guide**

This section used to be a listing of the various class stats and metavalues, which people promptly messaged me about because they didn’t line up with the Glitch FAQ numbers/the numbers of another guide/the most recent datamining/the data from the dream moon library/the voices in their head. After analyzing, I have come to a conclusion: 

**The stats are made up and the metavalues don’t matter.**

For the most part, the trends are the same, and the end effect comes out to about the same place. As a result, I made this section, took out all the specific number references, and changed the version number to 2.0. 

NOW STOP MESSAGING ME ABOUT IT, I KNOW THAT THERE’S A CALCULATION DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN INT AND A DOUBLE THAT ENDS IN .0, I JUST DON’T CARE. 

In addition, with the realization of aspect and class expansions, I’m going to just not mess with those. For now, the guide will only touch on core classes and how they interact with core aspects, with expansion information possible to follow. 


	4. Preamble-Contents of the Guides

#  **Contents of the Guides**

A guide consists of three main parts plus whatever trivia I scatterbrainedly throw in. The big parts are the Role, the Arc, and Synergies. 

**Role:** What you’re literally supposed to do. A mix of narrative musing and musings on your class mechanics, if you want to get actual mechanic information out of this narrative-choked guide this is where to look. 

**Arc:** The general arc typical of this class. Sburb really likes its narrative coming of age nonsense, contained within its narrow view of coming of age stories, so this is likely about what will happen with you. The Arc is an odd thing, there’s no actual mechanic forcing it, but it seems to reliably happen. They have a beginning, the starting point you’re likely at when the game starts, development which is what happens, and then usually a general good ending and a general bad ending. It doesn’t always happen inside the session, arcs can start and develop some before you ever get into Sburb, and sometimes a single class arc can cross multiple sessions for replayers. In addition, you sometimes get a weird player whose class arc just can’t handle her. The troubles come and they bounce off her like a toddler tying to punch a bodybuilder. It’s kind of funny to watch in that same way, too: It’s nice to sometimes see someone give Sburb a hard time for a change. 

**Synergies:** Basically which aspects this class is really good with, and which combinations kind of stink. The other place to find mechanic musings, as often the synergies between class and aspect is less narrative than it should be and more based on each part’s individual mechanical interplays, no matter how much Sburb claims otherwise. 

The trivia is going to be a mix of mechanics, tendencies, notes on god tier stuff (I think every class has some kind of weird interaction with god tier, actually) and whatever leaps to mind. Hopefully someone will find this information helpful, or at least entertaining. 

I might on occasion mention a power, and for the most part these will be pre-set powers, but version differences will change what powers are innate. If I mention a power, and you’re not getting it innately, they’re usually not too much trouble to Freestyle if you want it enough. Some powers that are staples of certain title setups aren’t innate at all, instead spread entirely by the Freestyle community to the point that people forget they’re NOT innate. 

Addendum: It was pointed out to me that for all I talk about it, I never explain Freestyling. To clarify, ‘Freestyling’ is the act of using your understanding of your class and aspect to make a new power. You can ignore it if you want, but it’s generally considered one of the most essential parts of the game for handling bad sessions, exotic sessions, or particularly long sessions. How it works is hard to explain, if you ever say to yourself ‘I’m going to experiment with this power, see if I can get it to do x’, that’s technically Freestyling. There’s a lot of underlying mechanics, but you don’t need to understand them. It’s pretty easy to do basic freestyling or fraymotif freestyling (whatever variation of fraymotifs you have), but making a new power from scratch is fairly difficult and only Freestyling masters can spin off capstones. 

Addendum 2: You may notice throughout my musings that certain classes are given the wrong gender pronouns. This is partially because I sometimes forget which pronoun I’m using and partially because I’ve seen a lot of players playing gender-exclusive classes of the other gender. I’ve seen more female princes than male ones, actually. I personally suspect that the version of Sburb I frequent just has looser gender rules or more gender bugs than normal, but given the situation I also suspect that Sburb skips checking player gender when passing out roles on replays. It just seems like the kind of bug that Sburb would have. 

Addendum 3: I am NOT going to post matchups. You shouldn’t be fighting PVP in this game anyway, and even if you DO it’s going to vary so much between players and situations that ‘matchups’ are pointless! There are no hard counters and asking for them will not make them appear! Stop asking me! SBURB IS NOT A MOBA.

#  **The Actual Guides Finally Sakes Alive**

The guides will be presented in reverse-alphabetical order, because the idea of doing the bard guide first makes me want to scream and pull out all my hair. 

CRUD THE WITCH IS FIRST WHY DID I DO THIS WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF KALAKAN UNNLOG KINBLMENEC GORL NURK IA IA ACETOMENOPHIN F’TAGN


	5. Classes-Witch

#  **Witch**

**“Where did you come from? Where did you go?”**

##  **Role**

In a royal court, a Witch is not an actual court member. She’s an outsider, a spellcaster that might be called in from time to time when she can do something no one else can. In fact, a lot of Witches seem to be outsiders from their own group, either living a long way away, not being quite as into the mutual interest as everyone else, or just being weird for whatever reason.

This angle, as an outsider, is really center to a Witch’s power and ability: they see things from a different way from everyone else. Oftentimes the Witch is the one person who knows things about Sburb beforehand, other times they don’t know about Sburb but do know about other things that wind up important. The witch is worth keeping around not because she’s in vogue, but because she’s the nerdy person in the back of the room who knows about technology. Alternatively, she isn’t into all of your nerdery stuff, but she’s charismatic and will know how to talk to the carapacians. The entire point of the Witch is that she offers something from outside of your session’s clique.

Mechanically, the Witch is a caster and a good solo class. They work well, casting powerful magics, and they’re well-rounded enough that they can work alone, with travel abilities to put them where they need to be. This gives them the ability to be something of an outside force, while everyone else is going forward with The Plan, the witch is working outside the plan, jutting in to knock down an obstacle that no one else saw coming. When The Plan goes tits-up, you go to the witch and ask, ‘now what?’ Chances are she noticed something none of the rest of you did, and you can put it to good use.

##  **Arc**

The Witch starts as an outcast, but not commonly weak or at a loss. She’s strong, she’s a credit to the team, but she isn’t entirely a part of the team. Over time, that changes, she gets to know the others better, she comes to better understand what they do and how they think. That kind of thing. Often they’re eager to, having been on the edge of the social circle or even society in general a long time. Their goal, then, is to NOT become a part of the group.

The Witch’s entire point is to be an outsider, someone who works with a group but from a different angle. Think of it as organizational-level flanking: The main force pushes from one direction, the Witch and maybe the Sylph or Bard push from the other, and you meet victory in the middle. As a result, a witch must not fully become a part of the team, maintaining some independence… but she must also not become fractured from the team. It’s a balancing act, a mix of cooperation and independent thought, being in the wrong place at the right time. So, in general, if your witch seems distant, by all means invite her in a little, but don’t expect to ever fully understand her.

##  **Synergies**

**GOOD ASPECTS:** Witches get travel powers faster than most other classes, giving them an edge in mobility. This makes Breath and Space witches in particular amazing ‘bus drivers,’ a player who moves other players around, getting the entire session to run smoother. A little bussing likely won’t hurt a Witch’s arc, and both breath and space are also good for the shenanigans a witch gets up to. By far the best aspect for witches, though, is Time: Time benefits well from casting classes, and on top of that ‘independent work’ like what the time player gets up to is literally a witch’s purview, and timeclones don’t count in this case. As long as your witch doesn’t get too emotionally separated from your group, this may be the best time player title possible.

 **This is My Broomstick:** a midgame ability for witches, they basically imbue a single item with their aspect and can use it to ride around. Seemingly unusable by other players, the broom will follow the witch’s orders no matter who is on it or if empty. As a result, it’s possible to put someone else on your broom and tell it to take them somewhere else, or tie a package to a broomstick and have it deliver it to somewhere. In addition, the ability has very good range (except for hope or blood broomsticks, the hope fades too fast and blood starts to lose power if it’s too far from players) so if there’s something you want to get rid of forever, strap it to your broom, point it at the furthest ring, and tell it to just keep going. Then just wait a day or two and make a new broom!

 **POOR ASPECTS:** The community part of Blood really doesn’t mesh well with the nature of the witch, nor does the emotional aspect of Heart. In addition, while a Witch makes an amazing life player, with lots of synergy between travel speed and sheer casting power, it’s partially undermined by the witch’s independent nature.

 **God Tier:** The Witch’s god tier outfit has weird striped socks and a pair of nice red shoes. Always red ones, except for the time god tier in which case they’re silver walking shoes. Either way, if you have a shoekind or related strife specibus, these shoes count as legendary weapons infused with your aspect. Not to mention that by tapping the heels together three times they automatically use your aspect’s most powerful travel ability with no cost. Unfortunately, once you are god tier your most powerful travel ability is likely not all that expensive compared to your available energy, and most people don’t find out about the heel-clicking because it’s not written down anywhere. However, trust me when I say it is hilarious to watch a god tier witch kick the stuffing out of a PKer.


	6. Classes-Thief

#  **Thief**

**“Oh. It’s you.”**

##  **Role**

The Thief is another outsider role, but her outsider nature is generally more social than physical. A Thief steals from the court, and as a result isn’t likely to be well-liked, but she is still useful. She just isn’t trusted. 

A Thief steals the aspect in question. For the most part, this is less stealing physical things and more buffing herself and debuffing the enemy. This gives them both access to their aspect and the opposite of, or a lack of, their aspect. A Thief of Rage, for example, may steal all the aggro from a group of enemies, leaving them standing around wondering why they were fighting the players. However, a lot of your powers either rely entirely on your thievery, or partially rely on it because it’s the main way a Thief re-gains energy. In addition, a Thief is sneaky and plotty, in combat you’ll typically find yourself befitting from being clever in a fight, instead of just strifing straight-up. 

##  **Arc**

The Thief arc is kind of weird. It seems to start with the Thief ‘stealing’ her way into the session: Either someone manipulates her to join, or she manipulates her way into joining, or she blackmails, hacks, steals, something. Oftentimes most of the players in a session don’t know or don’t like the Thief, making them something of a pariah. The Thief starts at this low point, and their job is… in a way, their job is to steal some respect, I guess. They never entirely become respectable (then they wouldn’t be a thief) and they don’t start sharing (then they’d be a rogue) but they prove good enough and necessary enough that the other players admit they need them or something? I’m going to be honest here, I’ve never been a Thief, nor have I ever known one well. I once asked a Thief of Breath what the end of the Thief arc was, what the happy ending was, and the Thief smiled and said, “You basically need to become Carmen Sandiego.” 

To that I replied, “Does Carmen Sandiego ever have a happy ending?” And she laughed, kissed me, leapt off the nearby cliff, was caught in mid-air by a gyrocopter, and flew off over the horizon. I was so confused and flustered I never brought it up again, so she got off scot-free. I guess, in a way, the Thief’s arc is about consequences: you’ll face consequences eventually, and you either need to be sly enough to avoid them or clever enough to work around them. 

That said, I’d more bet that I just don’t get it. 

##  **Synergies**

In general, Thieves work well with aspects that have a solid opposite, and less well with ones that don’t. 

**GOOD ASPECTS:** Breath, Blood, Mind. Stealing breath makes enemies weak, sluggish, and prone to predictable decisions. Stealing Blood makes them in-fight. Stealing mind makes them stupid, that’s pretty easy to figure out. 

**POOR ASPECTS:** Heart and Time are likely the worst, since they don’t have solid opposites. Taking time away from something just leaves it slow in time, or wonky in time, which all falls under the time aspect anyway. In addition, a certain amount of selflessness is inherent to the Time title; they’re supposed to keep everyone alive, not just themselves. Stealing heart just leaves them with less soul and you with more, and unless you intend to sell that to a demon I’m not sure it’s of any use. Apparently Imps do have souls, but it’s such an uphill process to steal one it’s not worth it. Plus, just because you steal a soul doesn’t mean whatever it is has to listen to you. Lame. Other than that, Light has a good opposite, but the revealing nature of light mixed with the stealth of a Thief is simply not a cooperative combination. 

Addendum: apparently thieves of light can be really, really good under the right circumstances. Steal enough luck and use a luck-based weapon, the enemies will be falling dead by accident and your weapon will reliably turn out absurd damage. Personally, this sounds like courting danger to me, since you still need to follow the Thief role, but someone out there is going as far as to push this forward as the ‘Best title ever!’. I mean, sure, under ideal circumstances, but any title is amazing under ideal circumstances. And if you’re doing the ‘under ideal circumstances’ dance, you need to step into the ring with Page of Hope. Page and Hope have amazing theoretical synergy, but people revile the title because it amplifies the flaws of both. Sure, under ideal circumstances Thief of Light may be amazing… but you still need to spend the game as a sneaking-based class with a spotlight on your back. 

How would you even get a luck-based weapon, anyway? That’s completely beyond me. 

**FUNKY ASPECTS:** apparently high-level or god tier thieves of void can bring things into existence. Seems shady to me, but there’s enough wailing and gnashing of teeth from my sources that I believe them. By the same nature, Thieves of space can make stuff not exist. All the same, I want to classify these as poor aspects because they do require god tier or otherwise very late game power: in early- and mid-game, you’re just stealing nothing useful (the space buff is good, I admit, but not that good) and inflicting no useful debuffs. And know what?

**God Tier:** God Tier Thieves pretty well have it made in general. Their steal powers get unlimited use, including ‘Steal ALL THE ASPECT’, which is overpowered no matter what aspect you have, and the buffs from the stolen aspect stop fading over time, giving the thief a chance to stack those buffs sky-high. The issue is, given the nature of thieves, they’re prone to just deaths. On occasion, even a PKer can strike down a Thief and it’ll get called just. And Thieves actually don’t get a lot of stat bonuses from their god tier, meaning that without their stolen aspect (or in a situation where it doesn’t apply) they’re maybe the single easiest God Tier to kill. 

**Except:** The Breath aspect loves dodging attacks. A god tier thief of breath combined with enough stolen stacks of breath can dodge attacks that they don’t even know are coming, and it’s not reliant on luck, prediction, or scrying of any sort. You can out-think a Light Thief, you can out-luck a Mind thief, you can out-maneuver a Rage thief, but trying to get a breath thief is like trying to catch the wind in a bottle: Simply by trying, you fail. 


	7. Classes-Sylph

#  **Sylph**

**“Show us the forbidden bees.”**

##  **Role**

The Sylph is an unusual role. It’s commonly an outcast like the Witch, but less physically and more psychologically. It’s hard to explain. It’s like, if you have a party of romantic nutjobs, you know, the ones that obsess over romance? Then the sylph might be aromantic, just not interested in romance at all. If a group is a lot of nerdy virgins, the sylph might be sexually charged and romance-wise. If a group is a lot of angry, maladjusted teenagers, the sylph might be a motherly figure. If a group is a lot of intellectual, ponderful thespians, the sylph might have a straightforward, slightly brutish wisdom. She’s an outsider like the Witch, but the court goes to the witch to get stuff done from the outside, they to go the Sylph to get information from the outside. The Sylph is just naturally going to form an important part of your group, because she’ll either know stuff no one else does, or think about things no one else does, or she’s just different from everyone else and you need her to keep this party balanced. From that angle, she’s kind of like a more passive, more extreme Witch. 

In short, if you’re a sylph, you’re there to be you: you provide something to the group they don’t have, either intellectually or emotionally, and just by being yourself and being available you’ll likely do good you’re not even aware of. 

Oh, also, when you hit that breaking point, let loose.

##  **Arc**

As a Fairy-being, you start out as an outsider, but everyone quickly comes to love you for providing something no one else can get. They’ll often come to you last or next to last, preferring what they know over your unknown, but they still need you. It’s a kind of slow build-up, similar to the witch. It’s about when you get to the decision part that things take a sharp turn. 

The Witch is all about a balancing act, not entirely joining the group. The sylph instead needs to carefully decide when to go nuclear. There’s going to be a point where everything has gone wrong, and the Sylph decides to unleash the wrath of the fae. 

**Important:** I forgot to mention in the role bit: A Sylph has middling caster stats and combat stats that start low and build up over time. They’re on-par with knights and princes in the mid-game, and by the end they’re comparable to fully realized pages.

Once the genie is out of the bottle, the Sylph has a dual nature: she still provides all that fairy wisdom goodness, but she also is there whenever a building needs to be knocked down. The challenge is knowing which situation is good for which solution. Because when you have a really nice hammer, sooner or later things start looking like nails. 

In this way they’re kind of like Pages, starting out underwhelming and then becoming terrifying, except Sylphs don’t really risk death the same way in the early game, and they don’t quite have that feeling of build-up. With a Page, you can watch them get stronger, gauge their progress. Sylphs are just kind of around, innocuous, until one day they stand up, say “I’m tired of this, I’mma kill the gods” and then do it. 

##  **Synergies**

**SYNERGIES DO NOT MATTER FOR SYLPHS.**

No, really. It’s the darndest thing: Sylphs seem to find ways to make themselves amazingly dangerous without their aspect being involved. They just seem to gravitate to non-aspect ways of killing things. People who have been in teams with sylphs that have gone nuclear will know what I mean. Just for example, once I had a sylph who was kind of the group dad, breaking up fights, doling out worldly knowledge, helping people get what they want, and then one day a bunch of liches attack the team meeting backed by a denizen spawn. He stands up, says ‘I’m tired of this shit,’ and takes off his shirt revealing MASSIVE CYBORG ARMS. 

It was BREATHTAKING. 

Also, that said...

**God Tier:** Really, given how Sylphs kind of run on psychology and nonsense, God Tier may have the least effect on them. Sure, the casting buff is big, and they suddenly become hard to kill, andand god tiering is generally pretty good about leaving the sylph’s unique nonsense intact, but it doesn’t generally buff that unique nonsense, it just gives them additional aspecty nonsense. So if the aspect in question doesn’t really mesh with their unique nonsense, they’re not likely to appreciate it as much as other classes. On the other hand, if the Aspect DOES sync with the nonsense, it’s basically throwing gasoline on the fae fire and they become even MORE dangerous. 

**Warning Signs: Broodfester Tongues:** If you have a sylph who is kind of doling out prophecy knowledge, make note of whether they’re from Skaia or Derse. If Derse, keep an eye out for signs of others corruption. A big warning sign is if they’re casually fluent in the broodfester tongues. I know, glyeg, I’m one to talk, but this basically means two things: One, Sburb specifically set up this session to have to deal with corruption, so you’d better read up on it so you can deal with it. Two, whenever that Sylph goes nuclear they will likely be using other-infused weaponry and maybe corrupted class powers, making corruption management even more important. The issue is that you likely won’t be able to just clean the corruption, either: their Sburb identity and Fae powers orbit around it. Cleaning it up would be borderline playercide. 

Sylphs are kind of weird that way. 

**Actually, While I’m On the Topic of Corruption:** be aware that under certain situations outside beings other than the others can become aware of and interact with Sburb. Generally speaking, if the others suddenly back away from the incinisphere’s radius and you can no longer hear them from Derse’s moon, there’s something  _ else _ acting in your session.

This is relevant because ‘Something Else’ is exactly what Sylphs run on in general. Chances are she either is involved, or knows enough to figure out what’s going on. 

**Don’t hate on me, Sylphs:** I’m a natural Sylph of Rage. I KNOW WHAT I’M SAYING, AND I SURE AS HECK DON’T LIKE IT. 

**Don’t Be Afraid To Hug Your Sylph:** They’re likely a little lonely. Show them some care and you won’t regret it!


	8. Classes-Seer

#  **Seer**

**“The future called. It just breathed heavily into the receiver until I hung up.”**

##  **Role**

The Seer’s role is really obvious. In the royal court metaphor, they are the court fortune teller, they peer into the future and see how things will go. Some are literal fortune tellers, other are more like spymasters, understanding how people will act. Ultimately, the Seer is likely going to be spending a lot of time with your Time player, as the Seer sees the problems coming and the time player time-meddles to stop them. Not always, sometimes they work just as well apart, but often. However, the Seer is also about manipulating events using future-knowledge. So, if your Seer does weird things, it’s because they literally know the future and moving that shoebox a foot to the right will prevent a disaster. 

Or maybe it’ll be a hilarious prank. Or maybe they’re just a perfectionist. Personally, I just pretend I didn’t see it when a Seer does that kind of thing. 

##  **Arc**

The Seer kind of eases into the role instead of just being thrown into it since it’s such a tricky role, but they typically get some steam pretty fast and get right to work. From there they typically work just fine until they either A. see something they’re not supposed to and flip out over it or B. see something terrible on the horizon and get obsessed with it. Either way they will flip out for a little bit, go mad with power and control, despair as they realize that their efforts have CAUSED what they wanted to avoid, mope a while, and then get back to work. I once saw a seer go through that entire process up to moping in under five minutes. He never stopped moping, we basically went the rest of that game Seer-less. 

The details may vary (maybe they realize that the thing they obsessed over was never a risk in the first place, or that it’s already happened, or any number of things) but the power trip followed by moping happens at least once, sometimes several times. Sometimes Sburb likes to spice things up with ‘now you must do something horrible to stop something more horrible from happening’ just to mess with Seers. 

Sometimes it does that, and the Seer does it, only to find that the other thing had to happen for the main timeline and they are now doomed. Honestly, Sburb is just an ass to Seers. 

Addendum: Some people have been going on about Seer’s eyes being doomed. This may be a version difference, but I haven’t seen it. I mean, I have seen Seers lose eyes, but people lose eyes in general. It seems like eyes are a very fragile part of the human anatomy or something. It more seems like eyes are big on specific players. I once knew a guy, life player, who lost his eyes twelve times throughout a session. He just kept growing them back, and Sburb just kept taking them. It had such an obsession with his eyes that once he tried to sacrifice himself heroically and the attack ‘randomly’ rolled minimum damage and only took his eyes. And he was playing a Page, too, so it wouldn’t have been hard for Sburb to just kill him. 

##  **Synergies**

**For Fortune Tellers:** Light, Space, Time, Doom, and Life all give really good visions of the future, if about different things. Time in particular, since the description on that one boils down to ‘you see the future by looking through time and seeing it directly.’ Pretty easy stuff, but not pleasant when you get a doomed timeline or null session. If one day your seer of time suddenly flips out and then curls up and starts crying and never stops… yeah, you’re likely doomed. 

With other seers there’s a fair chance you’re not doomed, because the seer has a limited point of view, but Seers of Time get special treatment that way. 

**For Spymasters:** Mind, Heart, Rage, Blood, and Breath are all good aspects for figuring out what people are doing, who is doing what, and who will do what later. Breath may seem like an odd thing on that list, but if anything breath seers are kind of refreshing: They can see what happens in moments of freedom and instinct, meaning that they more or less see straight into the blind spots all the other spymasters have. 

**I Have No Idea How Seers of Void Work:** Sorry. 

**Poor Synergy:** Seers of Hope can only see the good outcomes and the result of optimism or determination. In theory, they’re a hybrid fortune teller/spymaster. In effect, they can’t see the bad stuff coming, and likely have trouble seeing how to make the good stuff happen. Not to mention that with Hope’s slow scaling you’re going to be getting most of the Seer power only after you’ve needed it for a while. 

**Incredible Outliers:** due to the complex, multifaceted nature of aspects, lots of different angles can be taken on them, but with Seers they can have more sizable impact. For example, Breath is all about freedom and instinct, but it’s also about destruction, so it’s possible that a Seer of Breath will be able to tune in one events of great destruction as a fortune teller. At the same time, while Light is about luck, it’s also all about knowledge, meaning that a Light Seer might see outcomes based on what someone knows as a spymaster. Basically every Aspect has some kind of duality there, it’s just that most people won’t really be able to make the most of these off-kilter methods. It depends on the person and the Aspect. That said, if you do get someone who is using the off-note of an aspect for scrying, that’s generally a good sign, likely they have good understanding of both the off-note of the Aspect (and therefore the Aspect in general) and the Seer class. I guess ideally the perfect Seer will use their aspect to be both spymaster and fortune teller, but I’ve yet to see someone pull off being THAT good at it.

**Keep A Plot Chart!:** As a Seer, part of your job is seeing how things go where, and how they come out. You’ll never see the whole picture, but note down what you do see so you can try and track the in-between parts. Either look up a guide or ask a veteran player. In addition, be sure to compare plot charts with other players on a regular basis. And YES, you DO have to write it down. If you die, someone else is going to have to pick it up to try and figure out what’s going to happen without you.


	9. Classes-Rogue

#  **Rogue**

**“It’s like a party in here, and all your jewelry is invited!”**

##  **Role**

The Rogue is kind of like the Thief, but less hated.

I could feasibly just leave it at that and it would still be accurate, but I’ll expound a little. Rogues aren’t an official part of the royal court, but they’re well-liked because they steal stuff from others and give it to the court. They’re a little like Robin Hood: They don’t steal for their own good, they steal from people who they feel deserve to get stolen from and give the stolen stuff in question out to people they feel deserve it. As a result, they’re liked (or at least tolerated) by the court, and chances are they were actually wanted in the session (if not by everyone). 

The mechanics behind the Rogue is almost cut-and-paste thief mechanics but with the buff in an AoE that also helps your allies. In fact, it often helps them just as much as if not more than you. The rogue is a walking buff-redistributor, stealing buffs off enemies, peeling buffs off allies onto other allies that need them more, there’s even clever things that can be done with the power Keepsake, which lets the Rogue take a buff from her and put it on someone else with a greater effect and longer duration. It even stacks with buffs of the same type since it’s from the Keepsake power instead of the original power (a bug with all the buff-moving powers except one in the mind aspect, I think?), and with itself. The thief has a similar ability that lets them steal a buff for themselves, of course, but other players are far more likely to notice, and appreciate, Keepsake being used. 

Ultimately, though the Rogue and Thief have nearly identical movesets and stat modifiers, they play very differently and require a very different psychology: A Rogue is ultimately not only willing to share, but selfless, often endangering herself for very little reward, instead pushing everything toward the betterment of the group. 

##  **Arc**

The Rogue’s Arc is pretty simple, if effectively impossible to make into a guide: It’s about knowing what you give away and what you keep. If you don’t give enough away, you’re just a thief. If you give too much away, you’re left drained and you start to lose some of yourself, because humans (and every non-human race I’ve encountered) aren’t made to be given away entirely to others, you need to enjoy some, too. That’s something that often doesn’t come up in Rogue guides written around the numbers and mechanics: you can’t give everything away or you’ll be drained, leaving nothing left for yourself, slowly forgetting why you help others in the first place. 

Something that seems to really help a Rogue’s Arc is to have fun. Do silly tricks like hat-swapping or the like. Perch on high places in a black cape and growl ‘I’m batman’ to yourself. Nick enemy strife specibi and put them in glass cases around your dwelling spire. Actually, collections in general are a good way to kind of keep yourself centered while playing rogue: Everyone else gets the buffs, the boondollars, and the grist, but you? You are the reason why they always pull out an odd number of socks when they wash. 

Petty? Of course. But if you’re giving everyone else the important stuff, I think you’re allowed to be just a little petty. 

##  **Synergy**

The same rules as the Thief apply. Except, space and time are both kind of extremely good for Rogues. They both have nice buffs that do a lot of good when spread out over a team, and time really opens up all sorts of team-buffing shenanigans. In particular, the Time power Momento is a nice addition to the rogue’s arsenal. For most classes, it remembers the buffs on you right now so you can get them all instantly later. For thieves it remembers the buffs one someone else right now so you can get them instantly later. For Rogues, it can copy from anyone to anyone, including yourself, and you can then use ‘I Was Bored So Now It’s Christmas’ give all your allies those same boosts, but better. Actually, know what?

**I Was Bored So Now It’s Christmas:** The. Best. Buff. Skill. In. The. Game. It’s a late-game Rogue-exclusive skill, and as soon as you get it you should make it clear what it does and start planning around it. Have everyone throw buffs on you, and steal some buffs and some aspect, and then cast this. Everyone gets stacking buffs, but at a higher amount than you, and at a longer duration. In addition, due to it coming from a different power, it stacks with the original power. With the low cost and moderate cooldown, you’ll likely find yourself casting this at least once every fight. 

**God Tier:** Again, the mechanics behind the Rogue God Tier are pretty identical to the Thief one. Effortless aspect stealing, check. Stolen aspect buffs don’t decay, check- Wait. That holds true for  _ everyone _ . No matter who is hauling your stolen aspect around, it won’t decay, and since no one else can spend the stuff, a rogue can feasibly power up the entire group to absurd levels eventually. It’ll be slower than a Thief powering himself up, but it will still be really powerful, especially if you’re spreading around light, breath, or life. 

Addendum: Actually, it turns out that stolen Life isn’t just healing over time, but the stacks of stolen Life are actually a measure of hit points that goes down as you’re healed, so you’ll still need to keep stolen Life up in combat. Still, get enough stolen Life going and a group will be really hard to take down. The Black King and Queen are immune to the ‘Steal all the Aspect’ powers, but any carapacians or underlings around are NOT.

Addendum Addendum: Apparently the Black King’s and Black Queen’s immunity scripts are in the scepter/ring, so if they’re without their item they can be affected by Steal All The. On the other hand, this also means that Ringwraiths and Scepter Wraiths are immune. 

Addendum Addendum 2: Also, BK and BQ are not completely immune to Steal All The, it’s just a 75% steal resistance and they shrug off the stolen aspect debuff fast. So I’m not sure that’s passed around in their items.

Addendum Addendum 2 Addendum: Okay, apparently there IS an immunity script connected to the royal items? But it’s overwritten by the BK/BQ’s less-good resistance? I don’t even know, I’m not going any further down this rabbit hole. Addendum doesn’t even seem like a word anymore.


	10. Classes-Prince

#  **Prince**

**“A regal mushroom, better feared than loved.”**

##  **Role**

The Prince will be one of your main combatants, from start to finish. That is their mechanical role, even if it’s only a part of their full role. Princes are in many ways like royalty, they’re often people of wealth and influence, they at least consider themselves very capable, and their duty is both in combat and in control. This can sometimes bring your prince into conflict with your session leader, but most of the time Princes at least deserve to be heard. Sometimes they’re solo fighters instead, capable and independent, but in any case expect a Prince’s presence to be felt in a session. On the battlefield they’re very notable, especially in the early or middle game just look for the thickest of the fighting and they’ll be there. 

The exact details of a Prince’s role really depends on their skill set, sometimes they act as tacticians or managers as well as fighters, just don’t ask for relationship advice from them. Even if they are charismatic, their separation from the common folk often leaves them with some social interaction issues. 

Once they start getting into their aspect, expect them to be very good at breaking it. That’s what they do: a prince’s job is to decide when something has gone too far and must stop. A Prince of time need not partake in the complete round of time shenanigans, he can instead destroy them. A Prince of Life isn’t going to be doing much healing, but when an execution is called for he is second to no one. 

Basically, the Prince is your DPS with the ego of someone really good at being DPS and they get some really edgy abilities later on. 

##  **Arc**

Your Prince, while likely not literal royalty, is bringing some baggage with him into the medium. Princes easily have the single highest starting point in the game, often having quality equipment and some amount of combat training before the game even starts. A good Prince can carry the entire early-game on her shoulders, which is good because it’s the highest point in his entire career. 

The Prince’s Arc is a fall from grace: from being the best to being a flop. From being the man to being a dude. This isn’t at all helped by the Prince’s weird knack for self-destruction: they destroy their Aspect, so as a result being a Prince of Aspect kind of rots them over time. Between that, their emotional issues, and the way that everyone else rises up to meet and even surpass them, and Princes fall pretty hard. From there, the Prince has to get up and keep fighting. Not re-attain their former glory, they can never have that back, just to keep going despite everything they’ve lost. A lot of Princes can’t take it, and given the self-decay bit and the touchy parts of some of the Aspects, a bad Prince can quickly become a Player Killer. 

##  **Synergy**

Princes are a little paradoxical with their synergies. The Aspects that give them the best abilities also give them the harshest downsides, and as a result the powers with bad synergy that aren’t so bad to suffer are maybe better than the mechanically superior ones. That said, due to a Prince being able to use both an aspect and its lack, they’re generally going to be more notable with Aspects with solid opposites.

**Bad to Suffer:** Life, Heart, Blood, Mind, Hope, Rage. These are maybe some of the strongest Princes in combat, capable of horrific things to the enemy, but they’re scarred. Heart Princes tend to be psychopaths of some sort. Blood Princes, often sociopaths. Mind? There’s a lot of options, and none of them are fun. Hope Princes most often take their arc poorly, having grown up with everything and being reduced to nothing. Rage? Rage is connected to passion in general. A Prince of Rage is eventually going to suffer symptoms like clinical depression. Life? It’s hard to explain. You don’t take damage over time, but you just feel… drained. Exhausted. Like everything is harder. Your weapon is heavier, it’s harder to move around. You want to do things, but you can’t get your body to do it. That was a nasty session, and I don’t want to experience it again ever. 

**Not so Bad:** Light, Breath, Doom, Space. A little bad luck can be overcome, a lack of Breath stinks for your combat stats but the Prince’s is high enough that he can cope. Doom is also an odd one, as you don’t want too much Doom in you anyway? But at the same time if you use it wrong it becomes  _ harder _ to kill things, not easier. Space would be REALLY bad, but the Prince destroy-in-self debuff caps off before his existence is in any kind of danger. As a result Princes of space are just a little loose in space, and that’s mostly harmless. 

**Actually Kind of Nice:** Void! I have it on good authority that Princes of Void actually feel BETTER over time, and can use ‘destroy nothingness’ in really creative ways if they think about it. It just changes them from a straight damage class to a pseudo-support class. So… hey, if it works, go for it. 

**Straight Up Traumatizing:** Time. Dead Princes everywhere. You think that other Time classes have corpse problems? Princes have it worst. 


	11. Classes-Page

#  **Page**

**“It sucks to be you… it sucks to be you!”**

##  **Role**

Sburb hates Pages. By raw they’re a combat class, but if you try to do combat out the gate you will die. This is because Pages are the ‘really good at really high level’ class: Their starting stats are abjectly terrible, but at the highest rungs of the eccheladder they’re off the scales. As a result, the real meat is in the Arc.

##  **Arc**

So, the ideal arc of a Page looks a little bit like an exponential graph: It’s really bad at the start… then still really bad at the middle… and then less bad after the middle, and then pretty good when approaching the end, and at the end it’s a straight line straight up. 

However, Sburb Hates Pages. 

The actual line stops somewhere in the middle, marked with a skull and crossbones because the Page flipping died because their stat progression is abysmal! Now, normally combat classes have a leg up because they have pre-sburb combat experience: Knight is likely to have some, Prince is likely to have a lot, other classes will likely find they at least have good instincts for it (Heirs!), and Pages… are likely to have “combat experience”. Yes, in quotes. 

Things that count as “combat experience” for Pages: Hunting. Going down to the shooting range on occasion. Any contact sports. Professional-level play of any non-turn based video game (has been tested with Mobas, RTSes, and several different shooters). Being in a garage band, as long as said garage band is sufficiently punk. Livestreaming (no, really). Writing fights in fiction (YES, REALLY). 

Sometimes you do get a Page with real combat experience, but he will without a doubt be worse at it than any other combat class and often some of the non-combat ones! The issue is, Sburb doesn’t care. It has Page flagged as a combat class, and you are going to fight enemies typical of a combat class! And if you wind up dead on the ground because you can’t take on three ogres at once it’s not Sburb’s fault, you ninny. 

(It definitely is Sburb’s fault. Sburb Hates Pages.)

As a Page, the game is going to give you nothing. No free abilities. No statboosts. The entire point of the Page is to work hard, take life by the horns, and claw your up to the top through dogged perseverance and teeth-grit hard work. Once you do that, you become Page, the all-powerful, with both casting and combat out the ass, capable of flipping ANYTHING.

EXCEPT that the Page progression is broken, it has 25% again the number of rungs on the eccheladder, keeping the same rate of exponentially increasing EXP requirement. It’s entirely possible to not hit the top of a normal eccheladder in a session of Sburb, and it’s possible that a Page therefore won’t ever get out of the ‘terrible stats’ part of Page growth in a game. 

If in your first time playing you get a Page, your goal should not be to overcome. It should be to survive. 

**ALCHEMIZE YOUR DREAM:** Even with the fastest-progression Aspect, you’re going to get your first Aspect Power after everyone else. As a result, your early game and a good chunk of your mid-game will rely on Alchemy. No expense is too great and no tactic too cheap. This is your life, after all, and if you’re not going to protect it, who will?

**BABYSIT YOUR PAGE:** Look, it’s not easy, and it’s not flattering for anyone involved, but a living Page, even a weak one, is better than a dead Page. The chances of it paying out aren’t good, but… are you going to leave your Page to die? No. You’re better than this GAME. THE PAGE IS A VICTIM. LOVE YOUR PAGE. 

##  **Synergy**

**Noo:** Just default to this when you get the Page class. Most of the aspects aren’t any worse than the others, people may compare details but when it all comes down to it, you’re a Page: Your life is terrible up until you become god, and the fine details aren’t going to change that. 

**Yes!:** Time! Promise yourself that if you make it big, you’ll come back in time and help yourself. DO IT. And be sure to follow through. In general, note down stuff you see that needs time-fixing because you’ll get to it later. Also, be sure to tell your teammates that you’re stuck with Page of Time, hopefully some of them are veterans that can fake the time element for a bit. Other than that, Light for the luck bonuses and Rage for the sheer stat bonuses it gives you. Page of Rage  _ almost _ has decent starting stats. Other than that, the passive bonus from Blood for teaming up should be active all the time on a Page. Babysit your page.

**YESSSS:** BREATH. HALLE-FLIPPING-LUGHIA Page of Breath! This is getting pretty deep into biased opinion territory, but Breath is about the best option for Page, kind of because it works the other way around. Breath is an early-bloomer aspect, moving getting your first ability from ‘eventually’ to ‘pretty soon here hopefully?’ What’s more, early Breath powers are fairly-economical flexible combat powers, exactly what a Page needs. Throw in mobility for running and the Breath dodgy nonsense and your chances of surviving long enough to actually score big with Page are about as good as they can get. Now, some people will go ‘myeh myeh the increase is lop-sided the grand total is the smallest of all the Pages’ but ONE The lowest grand total of all Pages is still enough to 1v1 a berserking Sylph and TWO you’re a BREATH player. Sure, the sheer stats are poorer than any other Page, but every iota of those stats are dedicated to wiping other things off the face of the medium. Sure, Breath travels some, and it loves to dodge, but Breath’s beating heart is sheer destructive power. If you are a fully realized Page of Breath, planets are only spherical because you haven’t touched them recently. 

**NO GOD WHY:** HOPE. Hope is the WORST Aspect for pages. Sure, the hypothetical for Pages of hope is crazy: Hope is a late-bloomer aspect. Page is a late-bloomer class. By the time they both bloom, the end effect is that you are a superhero that can take on the God-Tier of any non-Page player by yourself. The issue is that Pages of Hope are really, really bad for the beginning, middle, and most of the end of their progression. Hope gives next to no bonus stats (literally none at the start) and even though basically every Hope power is solid gold you’re not likely to get any of them until past the halfway point. Sure, in theory, Page of Hope should be the MVP of Sburb, sitting up at A++ Tier by itself, but in actuality a novice being given Page of Hope is basically dead and an experienced player getting Page of Hope girds their loins and clenches their butt for a terrible, terrible session. Because Sburb hates Pages. And, to be honest, Hope and Sburb don’t get along too well, either. 

**God Tier:** Page’s God Tier is ssspecial~. Instead of giving you the flat ability modifiers in certain things, you get a multiplier that scales as you improve! This means that if you somehow get God Tier on your first rung your stat multiplier is… x1.1. On the other hand, at full rungs and full Tiers? The multiplier is a WHOPPING x25! Yes, to EVERYTHING. That said, if you’re playing a Page and get a chance to God Tier early, TAKE IT. God Tier’s immortality will protect you from all the stupid deaths.

Also, uh, yes, the Page God Tier outfit is… less than flattering. Or maybe very flattering, depending on the person, but most kids that play this game will not like it. Thankfully, there’s a way around that: If your Sburb version has expanded fashion, after completing the tailor quests, you can go to Miss Taylor (Or the Derse equal) and tell her “I want to customize my pajamas” while wearing your god tier outfit. Normally if you wear a god tier outfit and ask her to customize your clothes, she’ll give you the ‘it’s so powerful and legendary I can’t possibly improve on it!’ bit, but if you specify ‘Pajamas’, she’ll just go ‘oh okay’ and do it. The customization on God Tier outfits is pretty bad, just a few generic parts, but at the very least you can get actual pants!

If you don’t have the fashion extension, just… wear pants over the top, I guess.

Cripes, even in God Tier Sburb Hates Pages. 

**Veteran Pages:** Now… my entire rant here may seem a little counter to the usual treatment of Pages. A lot of people really look forward to the next time they get to play as a Page. And that’s fine. I personally have had some really good times as a Page (Page of Breath, if it wasn’t obvious enough). The Page is a REALLY good class for veteran players, because veteran players know how to get the most out of their first alchemy session, what kind of fights they can take reliably, how to minimize roleplay penalties from fleeing combat, how to reliably hunt down sidequests. Page is all about optimization of your Roleplay bonus over time, and new and junior players don’t know a thing about that! For Veteran players, it’s a challenge, but it’s manageable because they know how to do it. 

It’s not that Sburb hates veteran Pages less, but that a veteran knows how to handle Sburb hate. 


	12. Classes-Maid

#  **Maid**

**“Can’t I leave you alone for five minutes?!”**

##  **Role**

The Maid is your help desk, your session’s maintenance expert, the cleaner, the butler, the secretary. They have one job, to make the entire session run more smoothly. 

The issue is that this is Sburb, it’s literally built from the ground-up to NOT run smoothly. 

As a result, for a back-end class Maids have good stats across the board and they really need them. Maids will often wind up either completely nullifying one big issue your session should be having, or lots and lots of little ones. As a result, they need to be flexible and intelligent, adaptive, creative, and lots of other things you don’t generally find all in one person. 

In the great Royal Court metaphor, the Maid is less the literal cleaner and more the almighty janitor trope. Really, look that up on TVTropes. You know, if you don’t need to accomplish anything today. Maids spend 90% of their session in the background, and 10% saving everyone’s life. As a result, even though they don’t have the same sheer presence as the Heir, Prince, or Mage, they still need respect and attention. In addition, as a side-effect of running around and fixing everything, the Maid typically has a pretty good idea of the state of the session. If you’re not sure why people seem down, try asking the Maid: chances are she has at least theories. 

Also, be aware that Maid is one of the highest-stress roles in Sburb, next to time players, Knights of Space, and any Page who realizes how doomed he is. That said, given those amazingly well-rounded stats, if you do push your Maid too far (or if she flips out and goes PK) it can be quite uphill to take one in a fight: Unless you’re an endgame Page, they have some stat that is better than yours, and I give even odds that even newbies will be able to use it.

##  **Arc**

Again, the Almighty Janitor trope: you are incredible, but not important. A Maid typically starts off at some kind of low point, and improves a bit right at the start, but then just stays mellow the entire rest of the game. It’s less an arc and more a flatline. 

You have NO IDEA how hard this is to manage.

In a game all about developing over time, staying at about the same speed for most of it is a PAIN. Despite how much stress the role gives you, funky little issues thrown your way all the time, you never really get ahead and never really stand out. I’ve heard it compared to playing Five Nights at Freddy’s for months on end: There’s no reward for doing well, only penalty for failure. If a Maid tries to be too big, they get slapped with roleplay penalties. If they fall behind, the entire session rocks a bit. What’s more your jack-of-all trades bit means that there’s someone that’s better than you at any one thing. It wears on one’s sanity. As I said, being a Maid is a HIGH STRESS role. 

I can only imagine what a Maid of Time goes through. I’m pretty sure that much stress would take some years off your life. 

##  **Synergy**

**GOOD ASPECTS:** Space and Life are both pretty solid, Space giving a nice toolset and Life really fitting well with the back-end bit. Also, if you’re the Maid of Space, the Knight is destiny-obliged to hang out with you, so you can vent to them. 

**GOOD BUT FOR THE STRESS:** Time is a really nice set of powers for the Maid, and having the Maid doing Time stuff kind of gathers all your troubleshooting into one package, but again, it’s a high-stress role. I have it on good authority that the time stuff doesn’t overwrite the session bumps, they add up. They add up and it’s not pleasant. Time Maids out there, maybe you should take time to make time to get time off. Really, you have all the time you need, you just need to be sure that you can use some of it yourself. 

**POOR ASPECTS:** It’s really hard to say that an aspect is ‘bad’ for the Maid. Other than time, but that’s less mechanics and more health. If anything, the biggest troublemakers might be Breath, in which case you have a very limited toolbox, and Rage, in which case you’re a ball of nerves attached to an atomic reactor and not allowed to be too loud. 

**Bus Driver:** If they get Space, or are stuck with Breath, Maids make great bus drivers. Moving people from place to place really fits into the Maid’s shtick, and while not dedicated casters they typically have the energy for some bussing. 

**Not Dedicated Anything:** Maid is not flagged as a caster class or a combat class. Other classes that aren’t flagged with those have custom flags, but the Maid doesn’t have one. As a result, it doesn’t get any special scripted events at all: Maids get the closest to the vanilla Sburb experience possible. This also means, however, that the list of abilities that a Maid can access is limited, which is why the class itself has so many. Except…

**You Have Been Thrown One Bone:** Maids, despite not being a dedicated caster class, get the special Aspect capstone that casters get. That’s the stupidly powerful things like Life’s Resurrection effect, the Prison of Ages from Time, Space’s Black Hole, AAAAAAAAGH arrrrgh AAAAAAAAGH! from Rage, all those crazy things. Now, using these is clearly tricky to mesh with the ‘in the background’ Maid thing, but it’s a tool in your box and it can be used, even if it has to be used carefully. Except for Resurrection, there’s no situation in which that doesn’t give you a roleplay bonus. 

Addendum: Apparently Maids can get the combat class capstones, too! I’m unclear on whether you can have both at once, or how you choose which one you get, but to my research no Maid has ever felt they got the wrong capstone power. 

**Don’t Cheese Off The Maid:** The Maid already has enough issues. Taunting them is not going to make them feel better, nor is it going to endear you to them. And seeing as they have good all-around stats so they can hit your weakness, and access to capstone abilities, if your Maid DOES snap, you really don’t want to be first on her hit list. 

**In Scotland We Have Mixed Feelings About Global Warming…**

…because we get to sit on the mountains and watch the English drown. When you Maids out there are feeling your flat-ass Arc chafe on you, just keep an eye on the Prince, Knight, Mage, or Seer. Sure, your Arc is boring and sucks, but at least you aren’t thrown the kind of dips that those classes are. Don’t taunt them about it, just remember that it could be worse. Maybe smile a bit when no one is looking. It’s a little mean, yes, but ask anyone who’s been in a service job: Sometimes a little schadenfreude is all it takes to keep you sane for one more day. 

**God Tier:** The capstone comes free with god tier. Personally, I’m not sure if this is on purpose: It may be an accidental triggering because the capstone is artificially integrated into maid instead of occurring naturally. In any case, no matter what rung you get god tier at, you’ll have instant access to a capstone ability. 


	13. Classes-Mage

#  **Mage**

**“I AM GOD UNTIL I MELT INTO ORANGE TANG!”**

##  **Role**

The Mage is the casteriest of the caster classes. They have the best caster stats other than full-powered Page and the highest starting caster stats bar none. Their job is to be felt and have big effects, to make waves. How you do this depends on your skills and your Aspect, but no matter what Mages are at their best when making things happen. From the Royal Court point of view you are the court wizard: You have your own swanky wizard tower all to yourself, where you work you mystical mumbo-jumbo and rain hellfire on anyone who sieges the castle. When the ruler has magic problems, he turns to you and asks ‘Aspect Wizard, will you cast a spell?’ Your answer is to be ‘Of course, my lord’ followed by making a huge explosion. 

It’s just sometimes an explosion of healing or emotions instead of death. 

##  **Arc**

Mages typically start off with an edge, a high point. It’s not typically as high as the Prince, or if it is it’s in a different way. Sometimes Mages have some amount of aspect ability before they even enter the game. Once they get in the game, they build, improve, and do crazy stuff with their aspect, making big waves and being felt. 

Of course, that doesn’t last forever. You know why Wizards always get their own tower? It’s not just that he’s a big deal, it’s that it keeps his experiments away from everything else just in case they go wrong. At some point during your session that tower is going to explode. Whereas the Prince kind of declines, the Mage plummets in freefall. It’s often accompanied by a great emotional or physical injury, often not only limited to him, and overwhelmingly caused by the Mage’s ego or by something he did going horribly wrong. Often the effects on the Mage are crippling, sometimes literally. 

The end part, then, is that the Mage (much like the Prince) has to accept this. They were soaring and lost everything in a sudden, terrible moment and they have to accept this. How exactly this goes really depends on the exact situation, but as a general rule a Mage trying to claw his way back up to the top isn’t going to succeed. 

Now, every time I tell this to a Mage, they deny it, challenge me. And you know what? I will be quite happy to hear how you proved me wrong. Doomed timelines don’t count, Player kills don’t count, and ‘I recovered and will continue to recover’ doesn’t count: there’s still time for more to go wrong. 

I have a little secret to the Mage arc, but I’ll share that a little further down for those who want to hear it. It’s intended for people’s second or more time as Mage, it’s not likely to hit too close to home unless you’ve suffered the fall at least once. 

##  **Synergy**

The setup of the Mage is such that there really is no ‘Bad’ Aspect. Sure, Life, Space, Time, and Breath are all really traditional caster Aspects, but there is no aspect where the role of the Mage doesn’t shine like a lighthouse. Instead, let’s view how bad the fallout is likely to be…

**Everything But the Mage is Fine:** Life, Hope, Blood, Mind, and Heart are all likely to only have a little collateral damage. You’ll notice that these are pretty well internal and generally constructive Aspects, really not made for making massive damage. Hope can be really bad, yeah, but the fall generally happens before you get to the bulk of the Hope powers. 

**The Outer Ring Likely Heard the Explosion:** Void, Doom, and Light will likely be more dangerous, since these are generally unstable Aspects. But not as unstable as…

**Who Exterminatus’d My Planet:** Breath and Rage. There’s likely to be some lasting damage after this nonsense. 

**Flip A Coin:** Time and Space, due to being really important roles in the game, could go either way. If the Fall happens after the bulk of frog breeding or time nonsense, you should be fine. If before, or if the frog breeding was damaged, you have a big problem and likely a doomed timeline. 

**This Is Just Guesswork:** It’s entirely possible a Life fall could be disastrous. It’s entirely possible for a Breath fall to be a fart in a jar. There’s really no way to tell what’s going to happen without getting the Seer to check.

**My Secret Mage Strat:** I’ve played Mage a few times, and only after I’d played in several games with other Mages. The first time was relatively early in my Replayer career, but I’d already connected the dots over class arcs and guessed that I was likely to have a fall myself. So I did some pondering to try and wonder if I could avoid the fall or mitigate it. I eventually came to a conclusion: if I was going to fall, it would be for all the right reasons, when I wanted it to happen, and with style. 

Long story short, wound up blowing up my dwelling spire, but it saved the rest of the party from a TPK and earned us all a bunch of sweet Legendary loot. 

See, in my mind, I was like a high-power character in a video game with a self-destruct mechanism. Sure, it’s kind of weird, but if that mechanism is used at the right time it’s worth a lot of good. I never recovered from that completely, my server player almost strangled me on the spot, but it meant that my fall was something I chose, something I could see coming, and it mitigated unwanted damage, leaving me able to keep playing. Now, for most first-time Mages, you’re likely scoffing and thinking you’ll upstage me, which is fine, but next time around… maybe you can please Sburb’s personal failure fetish without losing any limbs or friends in the process. Just think about it. 

**God Tier:** Actually, I didn’t have anything to really put here, then I realized something: I’ve never heard of a Mage getting god tier before the fall. So I asked around, and if it does happen it’s very rare. In addition, despite a Mage’s life often being in danger during the fall, it’s not commonly a cause of God Tiering unlike… anything and everything else that’s a sizable risk to life and limb. Mage God-Tier ascension seems to be prophetically bound to after the fall. It’s kind of creepy now that I think about it. I’ve heard some people mention that a Mage isn’t properly a Mage until after the fall, so maybe that’s related? Not sure, but it’s going to bug me now. 


	14. Classes-Knight

#  **Knight**

**“My FACE is my SHIELD”**

##  **Role**

Protector and quest-monkey, the Knight’s job is to fight for the Court, sometimes defending them, sometimes acting as an agent of their will. The Knight is the single most typical combat class in the game: Solid combat stats, just enough casting for some tricks, and a number of tank-style powers to defend themselves and others. 

Also, Knights are the de facto frog breeder buddy for the Space player.

I have no idea why. 

In any case, if you’re the Knight, go make friends with the Space player, because sburb is likely to devise an excuse for all the frog breeding progress to be made while you two are working together. 

##  **Arc**

A Knight typically starts with some combat experience, and then starts a climb as the game begins. They fight, and they fight well. They fight a lot. And sooner or later, they get tired of it. 

This doesn’t happen as consistently as some other arcs, but a lot of Knights just get tired of fighting. It’s called Knight Syndrome for a reason, you know. Typically the issue is that the Knight needs a reason why to fight, or that reason needs to be re-affirmed, or the reason they had previously is kind of falling apart and they need a new one. A Knight who starts fighting because it’s fun might take it back up as a duty. A Knight who starts fighting out of duty might need to be reminded that his friends need him, that kind of stuff. 

Also, sometimes it’s less literal and more metaphorical. One of the duties that often fall to Knights of Heart or Blood is to control in-fighting, and eventually that can get tiresome. In fact, the role of the Knight is rigged up by Sburb itself to get tiresome, because sessions often seem to lack their Knight’s aspect, or is using it incorrectly. 

A Knight of Time might have a session that’s way too short, or way too long. A Knight of Hope may have a rough session full of pessimists. A Knight of Mind often has a session full of people not used to lateral thinking. As mentioned above, a Knight of Blood might have a session that risks infighting, and Knights of Heart might be looking at a complex love icosahedron and need to manage it. That kind of nonsense. 

Oh, by the way, this means that there’s now three random nonsense management players: The Time player, the Maid, and the Knight. Yay. 

In any case, the stress of frog breeding is also there, but the odd thing is that it doesn’t seem to connect to the other parts of the Knight’s Arc. Since it’s not a mainly combat role, it’s often seen as a break, or a nice change of pace, or the like. In many ways Frog Breeding kind of messes with the Sburb normal stuff; it’s weirdly rigged up to succeed, compared to everything else in this game. Sure, it can still fail in spectacular ways, but compared to almost everything else? It’s weirdly reliable. 

##  **Synergy**

**GOOD ASPECTS** : Blood, Time, and Rage have really good mechanical synergy with Knight. Breath and Doom also, but to a lesser extent since their destructive focus doesn’t mesh as well with Knight’s defensive elements. 

**POOR ASPECTS:** Mind, Heart, and Light all do their own things that don’t mesh well with Knight. Mind should, in theory, but in effect since combat-reading is so reliant on caster stats it and the abilities that are based on it don’t see a lot of use by the Knight, and the Mind Shield ability is situational at best (There’s only one ‘Terror’ effect in the entire game, most of the scare powers are ‘Fear’ effects, and so most of the use is going to be against monsters using Mind aspect powers.) In addition, Void’s Shield of Nothing does not stack with any other defensive buffs under any circumstances, including the Defender Stance and Parry powers, instead overwriting them all. Using certain kinds of Rogue it’s possible to put Shield of Nothing’s priority non-stacking terrible defense boost on enemies, but it needs both a Rogue and one of the right Aspects. 

**Space:** Knights of Space are a bit of a mess. I mean, Gravity Shield is good, and the mobility powers are often very appreciated by the Knight, but it’s a matter of frog breeding: A Knight of Space will have to breed frogs by themselves, and a lot of the fine details of the system are made for two players. 

However, this discrepancy has not gone unnoticed by the staff at whatever ring of hell made this forsaken game: A Knight of Space gets a 15% increase to all stats and 2.5% reduced cooldown on all abilities. 

Yeah. It’s not worth it. 

**If You Have A Knight of Space:** Spend time with that poor person. They spend all their time alone with frogs. Maybe you can rotate out each being a helper. 


	15. Classes-Heir

#  **Heir**

**“Hey, free chocolate.”**

##  **Role**

The Heir is a little aggravating, both to describe and to see in action. In action, the Heir pretty well does what they want: they have a lot, and they can do great things with it. Literally, that’s pretty well the Heir’s role: to get stuff and do stuff.

In the Royal Court, the Heir is literal: They inherit things. The game just gives them stuff. Not that they don’t have their share of troubles, see the Arc for that, but in a number of ways they have it pretty easy. A good mix of combat and casting stats (Slightly heavier on the casting), if moderate in both instead of good like the Maid. For compensation, the Heir gets improved passive bonuses. Both the stat bonuses from the aspects and the various always-on powers that most players forget exist. As a result an Heir is kind of a general expression of an Aspect’s ability more than a class with the Aspect attached. If you have a Life Heir, they’re going to be doing a lot of healing and sustaining but won’t have a lot of wiggle room. However, no matter what they do they’re likely to do a lot of it: Heir scaling is pretty good, so whatever your Heir’s niche is they can be expected to succeed in it. Sure, a Heir of Breath and a Prince of Breath will both be great in combat, but the Prince will be doing a lot of draining from his enemies while the Heir will just be a force of annihilation. 

##  **Arc**

The Heir tends to start at a pretty normal point, they have a good chance of being pretty normal before the game starts. Sometimes it’s a little high, sometimes a little low, sometimes Heirs seem to have all their ability up front, it really depends on the situation. Once in the game they start a pretty steady upward build, improvement over time that sometimes happens whether they want it to or not. Again, the Heir gets handed things, and they often take to their situation instinctually instead of needing to learn it. The issue comes when they need to DO things. 

The purveyors of history among you are likely well aware of the issues with passing things down a family line: sometimes those spoiled brats can’t be bothered to do a thing themselves. Sometimes they’re completely bonkers. Sometimes they’re actively the worst person to get the power and responsibility because of who they are. They still get it, though, and then they promptly run the company/nation/house into the ground. This is the Heir’s challenge: They’re given a lot. They’re also expected to do a lot. 

Fun fact! Heirs are given no duties. Sure, there’s aspect-duties, sometimes ectobiology, but the Heir class has no role intrinsic to it. The Heir isn’t expected to specifically do something in particular, just do SOMETHING and make it good! It’s like being dropped into minecraft: some people will immediately set out to build something cool. Some will just kind of make a house. Some will flounder. And when papa Sburb comes back around with the stick, anyone that doesn’t meet the standards that he told no one about and he refuses to share gets beat. 

Addendum: A common theory that no one can prove is that an Aspect’s arc effect is magnified with Heirs. It’s generally hard to prove this given how fluid arcs are in general, but given the way that the Heir class acts I wouldn’t be surprised.

##  **Synergies**

The Heir class shouldn’t really have synergies, since it’s made to be an expression of the Aspect in question. However, that said there’s still good and bad Aspects for Heir, which kind of implies bad things about the overall aspect balance. 

**GOOD ASPECTS:** Breath is solid, as are Time and Space, but for me the winner here is Heart. Heart can be a little spotty in general, but when it comes to the sheer passive bonuses that an Heir of Heart gets it’s really quite amazing. Not to mention that Heart has a way to increase one’s innate bonuses temporarily, giving those sizable passive buffs a big boost, thus making the Heir even more… Heir-y. No, the winner of the Passive Buff Olympics is not Rage, as is commonly thought: A lot of the Rage power comes from emotion-based buffs that technically aren’t part of a passive but something that is auto-cast and takes energy over time. This is why Rage players are prone to exhausting themselves, and why they only seem to have their Aspect passives when rip-roarin’ mad.  

**POOR ASPECTS:** Mind is a little lackluster, as is Light (yes, big passive luck bonus, but luck is just luck and nothing more), but Doom really wins out because the Heir class also increases Doom’s passive penalties. Ouch. 

**LOPSIDED ASPECTS:** Heir’s middling caster stats make Life a viable choice, but they’re liable to lag behind dedicated casters in terms of actual healing. That said, Life’s passive regeneration gets increased by Heir, which means that your BASE life regen is increased. So the things like ‘It Keeps Healening’ that multiplies your base regen? Or ‘I’m Warning You, Man’ that gives someone else regen like your base regen? Or those stupid specific abilities that give perks if someone’s regen is high enough? Hier of Life more or less makes a regen-focused Life build possible. And it’s a good thing, too, because Heirs don’t get capstones, so no Resurrection.

Other than that, Hope is also lopsided. At the beginning of the game, you have no passive bonuses, but given the Heir’s fast progression and the bonuses that Hope eventually gives, a Heir of Hope is actually pretty good. The issue is that the beginning of the game is more than a little rough, putting the Heir in actual danger and stuff. Between that and the fact that Hope doesn’t really have a very specific niche, being an Heir of Hope can be aggravating. 

Addendum: I apparently wasn’t clear enough because some people have messaged me over those last two sentences. I’m not saying that Hope isn’t good, I’m saying it doesn’t have a niche: Hope has a lot of good powers but they all vary a lot and cover all the bases. The issue is, Heir primarily gets its niche from its aspect, and so an aspect with no niche other than ‘don’t settle for anything less than the best, deny the bad stuff and work to get the better stuff.’ kind of results in a Heir that doesn’t really know what to do with herself. As discussed above, what an Heir does with themselves is extremely important. The build-up (the part that Hope is obsessed with) doesn’t matter to the Heir’s arc: The result (the part that Hope doesn’t give a flying flip about) does. 

**God Tier:** Heir’s God Tier comes with MORE passive buffing, sometimes making Heirs a big part of a fight if they just show up (Blood Aspect). In addition, more than any other class God Tier Heirs get a lot of free abilities, every core ability to their Aspect, maybe more. So, those high-level passives? That Heir in particular really wants? Yep. Free. Let’s all just be really honest here: God Tier Heirs have it MADE. 

**Don’t Slap Your Heir:** Okay, let’s get real. Sometimes, Heirs can be annoying. They way they’re so innocuous but are kicking ass in no time flat. The way that their Aspect seems to fawn over them. The way that they’re commonly weirdly gooberish but never seem to suffer trauma to bring them down to earth. The way that they get their aspect powers first almost all the time. In fact, in this very guide I have partaken in a good-natured yet envious jab at Heirs on more than one occasion. But just to be totally clear: don’t hate on Heirs. Yes, they kind of got the easy mode. Yes, they are kind of the designated heroes of Sburb, given reliable legendary weapons at some point during the session almost all the time, and on occasion quests just seem to solve themselves for them. Yes, Heirs are on occasion annoying, not because of anything they do, but simply because they are Heirs and the Heir gets coddled by Sburb. 

But it’s not their fault, and they should not be treated like it is. 

Sburb hates you. I’m firmly convinced it hates players in general. It loves the coming of age stories it makes, it loves its convoluted nonsense lore, but I’m firmly convinced that it would much rather have all that without the players. So it torments them: it kills Pages, drives Seers to madness, kicks Hope players, and pushes Mages off cliffs. It gives the Space player the worst minigame possible, makes a Time player look into her own eyes as the life fades from them, and then coddles the Heir, going, ‘look at the Heir, I love him so much, he’s great and gets all the toys, don’t you wish you were this cool?’ But that’s the thing: You’re supposed to get mad. You’re supposed to get jealous. You’re supposed to shout and stomp off and cry. You’re supposed to drive your group apart, you’re supposed to leave bitter tears in your wake, as the Heir gets hit by the feeling that they somehow caused this, when they didn’t: It was just human psychology and the special hell we’re all trapped inside. 

But, at the same time, Heir doesn’t get a free ride forever. Eventually they stop getting stuff, and Sburb just tut-tut-tuts at them as they keep doing what used to work but isn’t working as well anymore, because Sburb has started to expect them to produce and is handing them roleplay penalties without even telling them about the change in status quo. Because Sburb hates Heirs, too, it just doesn’t tell them so. 

Remember, you’re all victims here. Maybe some of you are suffering more than others, but you’re all victims. When you drive each other apart, blame each other, try to take solace in your own strength, you’re doing what the game wants you to do. You’re doing exactly what it wants. 

You’re better than that. You’re better than this game, and you can overcome it. Together. 

Some people tell me I anthropomorphize this game too much. And I agree, sometimes I do. But sometimes I really have trouble imagining it, or the people behind it, as anything other than evil manipulative monsters who are doing this to us out of sick pleasure. I have dreams about it sometimes. When I can sleep. Because I have insomnia. Because I have brain damage. Because this game gave me brain damage. 

I think I’m allowed to hate it a little. We all are. I just do it in my own, brain-damaged way. 


	16. Classes-Bard

#  **Bard**

**“And that is how the mantis shrimp do.”**

Okay… I’m just going to drop any semblance of structure at this point. The Bard class doesn’t work with it. Trying to understand the Bard class is like trying to understand Japanese culture through Anime: You’re assured that the source of it all makes sense, but the more you see the harder that is to swallow. 

It’s nigh-impossible to say what a Bard is supposed to DO. You find references in the dream moon library about allowing or bringing about destruction through aspect and it’s about as communicative as farting in a windstorm. Applying the ‘is a literal’ at this point is completely pointless; while I have seen a Bard play an instrument or tell a story, I’ve never seen it done notably well or while accomplishing anything game-related. In fact, it’s hard to tell just how much if ever bards DO add to the game. But it’s not like they’re just a load of a class, they DO things, or sometimes make things happen? Trying to get a grip on this class is like trying to get a grip on an aquarium octopus using one of those claw-grabby machines. 

Permit me to tell you a story. I once asked a Bard “how do bards work?” and he looked at me, shrugged, and said “I just do.” It’s a short story. 

Actually, now that I think about it, this was the same Bard that caused the meringue incident. I’m not clear what started the incident, it started on Derse while I was doing a fetch quest, but it just kind of blew around the entire session sowing chaos in its wake. By the end of it, everyone was God Tier, all the Denizens were awake, most of the Derse agents were dead, and the White Queen was declaring a banquet in our honor. Then the Bard just looked at me and said “and that is how the Bard do.”

I guess really that all sums it up. Really, the Bard less seems like they have Arcs and more like they have events: sometimes Bard Things Happen. Sometimes it’s just one big event, sometimes it’s a few medium-sized events. Bards don’t seem to do small events, whatever they do is noticed (Even if it’s not clear HOW they’re connected) and it often shapes the entire rest of the session. Bards just seem to cause THINGS to happen! They’re like a walking pile of shenanigans in a trench coat that at any moment will fall over and release a variety of shenanigans to roll, spin, and silly walk across the landscape. One moment, they’re just kind of around and you’re not sure if they’ve ever accomplished anything and the next you’re sitting there stewing in your inferiority because of just how much the Bard accomplished in two minutes of rap battle. It’s gotten to the point that seeing the Bard just lazing around makes me happy because when they do things increasingly stupid things happen! Or terrifying things, or confusing things, or just ‘that certainly was a’ things. 

Pursuing Bard guides is useless. People who go at it from a mechanics point of view wind up tearing out their hair because Bards make no sense. People who try to dig into the Role-playing aspects of Bards go crazy because Bards make no sense. Bard experts? Never read ANYTHING written by a self-proclaimed ‘Bard expert’. One time I read a 60,000 word ‘guide’ that was just a long set-up for a chicken-crossed-the-road joke. I was about ready to strangle people with my bare hands after reading that. A lack of strife specibus wouldn’t have stopped me. 

And it’s not like I shouldn’t understand this! I have been a Bard! I’ve been a Bard and I STILL have no idea how they work! I was actually a really GOOD Bard, unanimously voted MVP of that entire session, and I  _ have no idea how Bard works _ . Other guides at this point might say something like ‘maybe that’s the entire point of bards bluh bluh philosophical tangent’ but THAT IS STUPID.

I don’t know. If any natural or career Bards out there want to send me something that I can use to give this part actual content, I’d very much appreciate it. 

Addendum: Several Bards (expert or otherwise) have contacted me to tell me that my Bard guide is  _ **~Absolutely Flawless~** _ . So… yeah. 

**God Tier:** The Bard God Tier outfit looks atrocious no matter what the Aspect is. In fact, let’s be mature, frank, and honest: on top of the ulgy hat, the ugly cape-thing, and the ugly shoes, the Bard God Hoodie has a codpiece. 

Yeah.

Now, interestingly, despite the fact that it’s supposed to be a male-only class, the Bard Hoodie is actually designed with a different female version. This is the only class in the game with this distinction: the reason that God Hoodies fit you so well is that they’re custom-designed to your body, and they stay that way. A God Hoodie will always fit you like a professionally-tailored silk glove no matter how much weight you gain or lose, or where you gain or lose it. For this reason there’s no need to make male and female variants of each God Hoodie, just the class basics and the automatic generation. 

But the Bard, despite being a male-only class, has a female variation. It has all the same stuff, but with one change: 

The codpiece is bigger. 

I wish I was joking. I FEVERISHLY wish I was joking. This is laughing-transitioning-to-crying levels of wishing I was joking. 

Thankfully, if you have expanded fashion you can go into Miss Taylor’s place and say ‘please help me’ while wearing the Bard God Hoodie. She will let you customize it for free without needing to even do the missions. Some changes will be forced, but only what you’d expect. Just be sure you’re happy with that first change, because it’s the only free one you’re going to get. 

Addendum: The Derse tailor, Habra Dashir, cannot be used for this bug. If you enter his store wearing the Bard God Hoodie, he becomes hostile and attacks you immediately. In addition, he has an innate damage bonus against fashion disasters, and the Bard Hoodie is a bad enough disaster that he’ll be swinging at 400% damage. 800% if you’re also a hooligan, which I suspect Bards are by default. Thankfully a death under these circumstances does not count as either Heroic or Just, but be aware your revival is liable to be unpleasant, as Dashir is liable to try to burn your outfit, with your body inside it. 

Also, the Derse Archagent will attack you on sight. In fact, so will the tall Derse agent. The medium-sized one will refuse to talk to you, too. Apparently the little one will follow you around, though, so there’s that. 

**If You Don’t Have Expanded Fashion:** You may just wind up not wearing your God Hoodie. I have it on fairly good authority that any high-end aspect-infused legendary clothing has comparable stats. That should be the biggest hurdle. 

Just hope you don’t have the ‘God Tier flight only works when wearing God Hoodie’ bug. 


	17. Aspects-Blood

#  **Aspects**

While the focus of this guide is classes, Aspects are also worth addressing since the two are so closely connected. Here I will touch on each Aspect briefly, what it’s about, its biases, and its common effect on an arc. Also, the Capstones, because a lot of them are really cool and I want to talk about them. 

The aspects will be presented in alphabetical order, since the idea of doing Void first makes me want to rip my own arms off. Actually, the idea of doing Void at all makes me want to rip my own arms off. Stupid Void aspect will likely chew holes in my guide if I try to talk on it much.

#  **Blood**

Blood is keeping two very different balls in the air. On one side, literal blood, life, and the like. On the other side, societal connections and bonds. As a result, a lot of Blood players will tend toward one extreme or the other, while Blood itself is typically pretty neutral on the physical vs metaphysical feud. 

**Physically:** Blood is about life. Expect Life is also about life. Wait, hold up, let me look this up. 

Okay, got it. In the traditional mindset of some philosophy I know nothing about, life goes through a cycle: Life, Death, and Birth/Rebirth. The Life aspect is more on the Birth/Rebirth part of the cycle, healing and creating, while Blood is in the Life part: Taking what’s already there and working with it. Obviously, Doom is Death. 

As a result, while Blood does have some healing, it far prefers buffs. Making what’s already there more so or less so is great for Blood, and as a result they’re solid support classes, which most casters will tend toward. For combat classes, those buffs will likely be mostly self-targeted, resulting in a player that is stupidly hard to kill. Typically speaking, however, a player has to choose who gets how much power: A player with a lot of buffs on themselves isn’t going to be able to share much, and vice-versa. Personally, my bias is toward sharing, but as a great man once said, “There’s a time and place for everything.”

By ‘great man’ I mean Markiplier. It was either him or Ross Scott. Whatever. 

**Metaphysically:** Blood is about community. You know, ‘thicker than water’ type stuff. It’s about the friendships forged in fire and hardship, that kind of thing. This is true to the point that a fair amount of Blood passive buffs affect all allies in an area, not just the Blood Player. A lot of very, very successful Blood combatants lean very strongly on this part of Blood, increasing the ability of everyone fighting with them. A good enough (and savy enough) metaphysical-oriented Blood player can turn even a small group of consorts into an actually dangerous fighting force. Rogues of Blood with both a Metaphysical bias and IWBSNIC can combine that, Heartlines (Basically a networking set up with a lot of perks), and We All Bleed Together (a power that cross-levels the health of everyone involved, ensuring that no one person dies first) to get some seriously impressive self-feedback chaining. 

In addition, Blood players who are REALLY good with it can turn ‘societal bonds’ into just ‘bonds’. Such as molecular bonds. Kind of a weird overlap with Space, yes, but there it is. In fact, anyone really good with the metaphysics of any Aspect can do really off-the-wall stuff with it. Remember: this guide is just guidelines.

**Arc Effects:** Blood’s effects on the Arc are really connected to how they interact with people. Blood players are expected to have strong connections with others, and being a loner is more or less guaranteed to give you roleplay penalties. 

**Combat Capstone:** Blood’s combat class capstone is absurdly overpowered. Actually, all capstones are absurdly overpowered, nevermind. You know how up there I said that they have to balance self-buffs and group-buffs? The capstone ‘Blood Brother Brigade’ throws that out. The more people in the ability, the stronger the buffs on the Blood player. The stronger the buffs on the Blood player, the stronger the buffs on everyone else. This can be MASSIVELY cheesed by having good planet or carapace reputation and going ‘everybody follow me!’ To my knowledge there’s no cap on this ability, and it stacks with almost everything. 

Addendum: turns out there’s a soft cap. If the Blood player gets too much power in the Bro Brigade, he explodes. So, maybe only choose small groups of NPCs for this. 

**Casting Capstone:** The Blood caster can look forward to an ability I call ‘Earthbound Prayer’.  You know in the ending of Earthbound, or Okami, where lots of people pray for your success and that’s how you beat the boss? It’s literally that. I’m not sure what it’s literally called, but I just think of it as the Earthbound/Okami prayer. It sends out a call for help, and if people care they can send you good will and attention, but basically some limited amount of their energy and life force. This makes you (or your group) more powerful based on the number of people willing to pop out a little energy for you. 

If you have good enough land reputation that your land familiars like to alight on you when you sit still for too long, every one of the consorts on your land will answer every time. If you have good enough dream moon reputation that the Queen lets you enter the throne room uninvited, every carapacian on that moon will answer every time. Yes, the more you do stupid side-quests, the more you grind reputation, the more you get game constructs to love you, the more powerful this is. By the endgame, this should be enough to make you able to beat down PK god tiers all on its own. 

Addendum: apparently some idea of what you’re up against is also communicated, so if you have black rep and you’re up against the Black King, you don’t get a lot of Dersites going for it anyway. However, if you’re up against someone with negative reputation with a group, you’ll get response from that group even if they don’t care about you because they want you to kick that guy’s ass. Yay, spite!


	18. Aspects-Breath

#  **Breath**

Breath is a very complex Aspect that you can get away with pretending it’s a simple aspect. It’s not all about destruction, it is complex and multifaceted, and there’s capability in its metaphysical side, but there IS enough destruction in it that I’m not sure it’s possible to have a non-destructive Breath build. Plus, with its bias toward its physical part, getting those metaphysical parts to come to the fore is difficult. 

**Physically:** Breath is the wind. At first it seems cute, with blowing things around, or setting up wings on yourself so that you can fly, but in this case ‘Breath’ is serving as a stand-in for weather and in fact a good chunk of natural forces. Let me put it this way: Breath is the aspect of natural disasters.

Sure, Breath’s physical aspect is wind, but if you bend that a little metaphysically you can do all sorts of stuff as long as you’re destroying stuff. Breath loves breaking stuff, and at large enough amounts it really does feel like a force of nature. 

However, that’s not the only physical thing that Breath can do: it can also let you fly, or dodge. Breath really loves to dodge, even things you don’t know are coming. This is because these parts connect to the other metaphysical parts of Breath.

**Metaphysical:** As mentioned above, some amount of the metaphysical nature of breath is destruction, the sheer fury of nature, but it’s more than that. It’s also instinct, and freedom. 

It’s hard to really explain more of it from there. ‘Instinct’ isn’t well-understood in any case, but I think this connects back into the ‘force of nature’ stuff: It’s about what you do naturally, without the binds of society and chains of all the time you’ve spent learning and being a person. This is related in some amount to combat instincts, too, something that Sburb players seem to have in good supply. Thus why the dodging and the fighting, and I think the freedom, too. Breath has lots of tricks for getting away from grabs, or fights, or entire situations, because part of the point of instinct is that there’s nothing to hold you back. And, again, ‘nothing to hold you back’ loops back around to the force of nature idea. 

So, Breath just wants you to dig back to your roots and become a conduit for the unbridled fury of nature. Also, it’s tons of fun.

**Arc Effects:** The arc is kind of odd, because it doesn’t feel an obligation to be connected to other things going on. Other Arcs kind of mesh together into one cohesive story, while Breath just goes off and does its own thing. As a result, the breath player might be the only one fighting-ready after a disaster, or the Breath player may stumble into a meeting half beaten to death after what everyone thought was a slow week. 

Also, Breath is an early-bloomer class, you get Aspect powers early and the powers are usually easy to use. Pretty economical, too. It’s not really viable to go through a long fight with just your aspect powers, but by the end game most fights you get in will be over fast. 

**Combat Capstone:** Breath of the Wild is a really, really straightforward combat capstone that’s also really powerful. It more or less takes your combat stats and turns them up to 11, no small print, no catch, just you kicking ass. It literally makes you into an action hero, and it may be the single most energy-efficient capstone in the entire game. Issue is that due to a bug or oversight it doesn’t properly manage some weapon statistics, making weapon breakage more likely. Now, most likely if you’re this far in the game and still trying to use common or poor-quality weapons, they break all the time anyway, but most abilities that apply this kind of combat buff also reinforce your weapon for the duration. I strongly suspect that this is an oversight. Make sure you at least have Masterwork quality weapons when using this, but chances are you’ll have an Epic or Legendary by then. 

**Casting Capstone:** Hoo boy, Hurricane You. The first red flag is the custom name, it’s Hurricane (Your name here), so if your name is “Billy,” it would be “Hurricane Billy.” The community commonly calls it Hurricane You instead, or if you’re a breath player and particularly unhinged, Hurricane Me. The second red flag is that you likely already have access to Wrath of the Storm God, a power that is almost never used because of the sheer magnitude of collateral damage, so why is the capstone an even bigger one? 

Don’t use this power. Don’t do it. It’s not worth it. If you’re in a twelve-man session and use this power standing on the far side of your planet from Skaia, it will strip your planet to the bedrock and also ruin your two neighbor planets IMMEDIATELY. From there, Prospit and Skaia will suffer destructive rain and windstorms, the planets on the far side will suffer torrential downpours, and eventually the veil and Derse will get a share of weather. It’s like a literal weather front that expands through your session like a ring-shaped wave, and even at the furthest points the winds and rain are disruptive enough that it’ll shut down normal operations of a dream moon for days. In the above example, a lot of prospitans likely die. As do all of your consorts and a few of your friends. Unless you, for some STUPID DERANGED IMPOSSIBLY BAD reason, honestly do need to cause irreparable damage to half the incinisphere, DON’T. USE. THIS. POWER. 

Not to mention that the power usage involved is likely to kill you, if the fact that you don’t get any damage resistance from your own power didn’t already. But it doesn’t need you to be alive to kill everything else, you just need to kick-start the entire thing. 


	19. Aspects-Doom

#  **Doom**

Doom is one of the big-time prophecy Aspects, leaving you to have to worry about everyone’s imminent demise. 

This is significantly less fun than it sounds.  

**Physical:** I’ve heard that Doom is a physical/metaphysical-neutral aspect, but I’ve never seen the physical stuff used much. Sure, the zombies are one thing, but in games I’ve been in they’re almost universally regarded as a gimmick without a use. The class has a lot of poison and debuff spells, but again I don’t see them used much. In fact, when I played Doom, I didn’t even know that poison was a thing. I almost entirely used the metaphysical fate-powers, and it was a pain.

Addendum: Turns out that a lot of Doom power visuals are either really subtle or bugged. So, a doom player can be using their physical aspect powers, and just no one notices. I guess it wouldn’t help that since the physical Doom thing is weakness and poison it won’t kill things by itself as reliably as some other Aspects. I always assumed that the fights around doom players were so short because they were fate-dooming the enemies, but doing DoT would have the same basic effect. I feel a little like an ass now. 

Addendum 2: Apparently on top of the bugs, with poison gas powers you can’t control the targeting. That is to say, they hurt your allies just as much as your enemies. Basically, physical Doom stuff is a lot harder to wrangle around allies if you don’t want poisoned allies. This is one of the biggest challenges in the freestyle community, since if they could use poison willy-nilly and not hurt their friends stuff would be a lot easier for physically-inclined Doom players. 

Well, if nothing else they always have zombie mode. It’s almost like another extra life, that. 

**Metaphysical:** Bla bla bla doomed. You know, like doomed timelines, it’s even possible that they work on the same mechanics. With the right power, enemies are just looking for excuses to keel over and die. At the same time, you can stall or cancel doom for your friends. I actually have a lot of experience with this part of it. 

I’ve decided I’m not going to write about it here. It was unpleasant. I’m all for cooperating with the people who manage prophecies, but the management itself is just distasteful to me. It’s exhausting and dehumanizing, and I hope I don’t have to do it again. Just respect your Doom player’s called shots and if they tell you it is Very Important to do something, you do it. Also, Doom players, don’t abuse this good will. Part of what you need for your job to work is their trust.

Addendum: apparently prophecy management isn’t usually dehumanizing. A lot of the advice people are giving me is counter to my mentor’s. Let me look into this. 

**Arc:** A doom player’s Arc is disheartening. It’s not that it’s just worse than those around you, not quite so simple, more that it’s stunted. The dips aren’t so bad, but neither are the peaks. You don’t suffer as much from Doom, but at the same time the Doom inherent in your role means that you can’t climb like everyone else. In addition, sometimes Doom likes to throw a big loss in, kind of like a miniature Mage Fall. Just to make your life a little harder. 

Addendum 2: So, when I was handed Doom in the early part of my replayer career, I was in a session with a Doom native player who was only happy to help. How to set up a plot chart, how to parse prophecies, who to put effort into saving and who to write off. There was a lot of stuff I never would have thought of, and most of it I found unpleasant. I did it, I even apparently did it really well, I just did it like you do calculus homework: with utmost care but with a frown on your face the entire time. 

Really, it was a pain. One kid loses a limb, but that saves a life. A consort village in exchange for another life. Deciding who gets the reputation hit from that. Is it worth relegating someone to a wheelchair if it means getting a legendary weapon? Is it better to completely tank someone’s Derse rep to have a better ambush on the Black Queen? How many lives are it worth to prevent a ringwraith? There’s just something crushing about being able to declare what you are doing now a doomed offshoot timeline. It’s a kind of weight that bears down on you. What’s worse, apparently I did that a few times. Clearly I personally never did it (that’s maybe the only power in the game that cannot be used in the alpha timeline) but the knowledge that at some points versions of me specifically forced a timeline to be doomed to send resources to the Alpha timeline? It feels wrong. 

However, the more I look around the more it’s clear that my old mentor was likely the one biased toward Metaphyiscal Doom and away from happy prophecy management, not the Aspect itself. I already didn’t like the guy, and this isn’t helping that. I just hope that his methods didn’t lead me to cause any pain that was unneeded. In any case, if I ever get doom again, I’ll try more of the happy management stuff. Also, get in touch with the freestylers to see if I can get Co-op smog. Poison gas sounds like a lot of fun at this point.

So, basically my Doom guide is worthless. Sorry. 

**Combat Capstone:** King Minas’ Court. At first I thought it was ‘Midas’ misspelled, but apparently Minas is the judge of the underworld in some stories. Anyway, this is more or less an instant kill effect against all fate-doomed targets in an area. It doesn’t even need a lot of Doom to work: even a little will instantly become lethal with this effect. It’s commonly used in combat by Metaphysical Doom combat players, yes, but it’s also very popular to get rid of doomed selves that are piling up or instantly stopping a hostile incursion from a different time line, which apparently happens on occasion. 

Addendum: Apparently it is a typo after all, the mythological figure (and the rare Denizen) are both spelled ‘Minos’. Good proofreading there, Skaianet. 

Addendum 2: Don’t use this power against Denizens. Even if you are in a doomed timeline, they’ll just laugh it off. They have fate-proofing, no player-usable fate power affects them. Makes going up against a Denizen with metaphysical Doom powers more about directing Doom away from you than onto your enemy. Kind of an awkward discovery, that. 

Addendum 2 Addendum: Using this power against the Minos Denizen kills you instantly. I mean, that makes sense to me. I don’t know what you were expecting, it’s his court. 

**Casting Capstone:** Judgment Day. You know zombie apocalypses? You know nuclear apocalypses? How would you like to have both at once? In an area you frequent? That takes forever to fade? No? Then don’t use this power. If you see tombstones breaking up out of the ground, just run. Just run, and don’t touch the Doom player. The Doom player is the one emitting that horrific doom-toxin, touching them is like touching a nuclear reactor mid-meltdown. Also, don’t return to the area until the verdency (the stuff your land is made of) has completely re-grown. If you go back before then you can still be poisoned. Not to mention that the poison is hard-coded to make all deaths into poison zombies. So in order to save you, someone’s going to have to smack you on your toxic, zombifying lips…


	20. Aspects-Heart

#  **Heart**

Ugh… here’s a flipping aspect. When I first learned about Heart, I thought it was about emotions. Nope, turns out it’s about manipulating souls. You know, the very culmination of your being. And then I learn that the ‘soul’ may or may not be separate from someone’s core, which Heart players are able to just pop out of you and tweak like someone tuning a radio or changing the options on a video game. That is not cool. That is just not cool. 

Now, Heart IS about emotions, but it’s also about how sburb handles data, that shiney inside you is basically code that is you. And… you know what? If you want to reach into someone and make a change to their very self, 

**BE SURE YOU CAN DO THAT:** No one wants to be your experiment. And if you mess up, you’re lucky if all you do is kill them. 

**EXPLAIN CLEARLY:** “hey, hand me your sparkle, this will be cool” is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN. You WILL explain the intent, and you WILL be sure that the other person understands completely before continuing. 

**GO INTO DETAIL IF ASKED:** Even if they won’t understand the technical side of it, you will do your best to explain whatever questions they have, no matter how stupid or obvious they are.

**EXPLAIN ALL RISKS AND SIDE-EFFECTS:** you know how medicine commercials are required by law to list every single side effect and risk even if it only shows up .01% of the time? DO THAT. NO EXCEPTIONS.

**NO MEANS NO:** If they say they don’t want you putting your hands on their shiny, You. Do. Not. Touch. Their. Shiny. And if you try to when told no, they are allowed to defend themselves. With nonlethal force, but  _ a sburb player can take a lot more punishment than a normal human. _

**MAKE COMBAT ARRANGEMENTS AHEAD OF TIME:** if you have a cool idea for combat that involves sparkly-touching, clear it ahead of time. “There’s no time to explain, hand me your sparkly” is VERBOTEN. 

As far as I’m concerned, one breach is to be punished by forcing the guilty party to read and memorize the Heart part of GentlemanMannerism’s etiquette guide. Additional breaches are to be punished with the group searching ‘most painful thing in the world’ and choosing something fitting and available. Fun fact: Combining a Doom symbol with a common jellyfish creates an irukanji jellyfish. Any effective Blood or Life caster can ensure that the guilty party survives the experience. 

Anyone who goes “Isn’t that a little bit extreme?” has clearly never read GM’s guide. Shiny-trespassing is no joking matter. 

**Non-Shiny-Touching-Stuff:** As said, Heart is also all about emotions, and there’s a fair number of emotion powers available. If your version has Psy-Buffs, your heart player will get a variety of good psy-buffs early on. If not, they still get a variety of powers, including ones that improve combat focus, decrease enemy agro radius, enforce pacifism, and a lot of counters to low-end Doom and Mind effects. Note, low-end Doom and Mind effects are what underlings are most likely to use. As a result, Heart players make good buff and debuff management support players. A particularly good Heart player on this angle can Freestyle-fake some powers from Rage, Hope, Doom, and Mind, too, giving a really wide buff array. 

**Arc:** I’m not sure if Heart has an effect on the Arc? I’ve poked around but I haven’t found anything solid. 

Addendum: Someone’s reaction to the Arc doesn’t change the Arc mechanics, and that reaction will vary based on the player anyway. 

Addendum 2: Yes, emotions are part of Heart’s thing, but you’re going to have emotions in reaction to your arc in any case, and all emotions are part of Heart’s thing, so it shouldn’t matter if you love it or hate it. 

Addendum 3: I have no reason to believe that overusing or refusing to use Shiny manipulation has any impact on an Arc. Yes, it is a little odd that for such an important mechanic the Arc doesn’t care, but that’s how the evidence points. 

Addendum 4: Stop sending theories to me! Unless you are an actual experienced Heart player with something to back your claims up, I’m not going to acknowledge them here. 

Addendum 4 Addendum: Aaaand nothing more on this topic has been sent to me at all. Seriously, people, can we get something? At least a confirmation that Heart doesn’t affect the Arc notably? Blah, I guess proof of a non-entity is impossible, isn’t it. 

**Combat Capstone:** You know the thing where a Heart player pulls out their own shiny and turns it into a weapon? That’s their combat capstone. Technically they can do that to any shiny, but the weapon damage is altered by a lot of things including willingness. As a result, grabbing an enemy’s shiny is a waste of time (true for most shiny-grabbing powers except for a Prince’s shiny-smashing) and most allies aren’t too thrilled with it, either. In any case, this is both very powerful and very dangerous, because if that weapon breaks, you just die. 

Addendum: Apparently there is such a thing as a ‘grab my shiny’ fetish. I just want you all to suffer that knowledge with me. I just can’t bear this disturbing thing alone, and brain bleach Mind powers don’t work on me anymore. 

**Casting Capstone:** Sacrifice of Annihilation is a stupid, stupid power. It takes a shiny and turns it into a bomb, making a huge explosion. However, that’s a cost of an entire shiny, and again it isn’t easy to get those from enemies! You’re sacrificing something to use this power, and while YES it does a lot of damage and ignores most defenses there’s no way to save the shiny you just turned into a bomb! You’re sacrificing SOMETHING to use this power. Choose wisely. 


	21. Aspects-Hope

#  **Hope**

Hooboy, Hope. I’m not a fan myself, Hope is in a lot of ways Sburb’s pet Aspect and it shows. It’s all about the buildup and being stupidly OP, both things that Sburb loves. Its power list actually seems to be refined, specifically considered and carefully balanced to result in a good, tight list of powers that covers all the angles. It’s almost like the Aspect was playtested or something. There’s next to no bugs involved, the graphics are all perfectly fine, and there’s no unmanageable downsides or any reason for other players to be nervous around you. It’s a straight good Aspect and I can’t help but get a nagging feeling that there was at least twice as much development time spent on it than any other Aspect. 

Really, part of me suspects that the ‘clothes are branded with aspect symbol’ bug is on purpose to let the hope player show off. It’s too reliable to be just a bug. Sure, it’s a stupid feature that ruins shirts, but this entire game is full of stupid features that ruin things. My suspicion is mainly because if you ARE wearing a white shirt that it shouldn’t show up on, the symbol will be edged with gold, and if you wear a shirt with the symbol on it in mostly the right size and place already, it won’t mess with it. 

**Metaphysical vs Physical:** Hope’s Meta vs Physical stuff is odd because it doesn’t really have a physical part, only metaphysical parts made literal. Hope is about growth, and has good buffs. Hope is about never giving up, and has good recovery powers. Hope is also about denial, and has powerful defensive abilities. Metaphysical stuff lovingly brought into the physical world directly. 

Basically, Hope’s theme is “Accept nothing less than the best.” It’s about bettering yourself, pushing yourself, not taking defeat, and accepting nothing you don’t want. It’s almost literally all about you. Really, this would be an egocentric’s dream Aspect if it weren’t for the fact that it takes forever to get to that point. 

As part of Hope’s angle on ‘Growth and self-improvement’ it’s a late-blooming aspect. You need to work hard to get your aspect powers, and while the passive stat buffs increase noticeably over time you start with none. As a result Hope players need to be able to rely on their alchemy and skills to actually unlock that good stuff. For this reason, while I dislike the Aspect itself I respect its players: They know that they’re in trouble at the beginning, and they work to live and prove they’re worth those awesome Hope powers. Even Heirs up and fight to be able to get that sweet Hope boost. 

Also, for the life of me, I can’t spite any Hope player that abuses the Eject power. There’s just something hilarious about seeing cast-iron anvils being used as artillery fire. 

**About Those Wonky Powers:** This was originally an increasingly labyrinthine Addemdum chain, but I had a moment of clarity and I’m going to actually write this up. Sure, a lot of Hope powers need a little setup to use, but they’re not like Life powers: Hope powers naturally form chains and patterns you can utilize depending on the situation, whereas Life powers are all so specific and situational that most of them are useless. Hope is kind of like playing a combo class in an MMO: You have certain cycles of powers you use, depending on the situation. One for a big hard target, one for multiple small targets, maybe a ‘casual’ one that is resource-light. Just go to a Hope guide and map out a flow chart, you should see some natural progressions form, mostly straight lines with some branching or switching depending on the situation. In addition, ‘Eject’ should be by itself, something able to be used fast between other combos or for odd situation control. A big part of being good with Hope is recognizing the situation and applying the correct combo. 

Now, there are SOME powers in Hope that are nigh-useless, but the rest of them are good enough that they more than make up for it, especially if you Freestyle in a few to give more flexibility to those chains. 

Addendum: Also, be aware that some of the high-end Hope defensive buffs will shrug off everything, including buffs from allies. They’re usually good enough that it’s not too big of a loss, but if your group has a buff chain planned be sure to not cast those specific powers. 

**Arc:** Since Hope is all about the build-up, the general gist of Hope titles is that they start at a lower point, and end at a higher one, with increases along the way tending to be slower. This isn’t always as great as it seems: Princes ‘destroy hope in self’ stuff pretty well undermines this change, and Heirs have a smooth enough beginning that it isn’t too big of a change past the early game. It’s nice for Mages, though, because while they still never rise back to full, they at least don’t face complete gutter-wallowing for the rest of the game. Also, it gives any kind of progress at all to Maids, so that’s a nice perk. 

**Combat Capstone:** Sepulchritude. Yeah, this is one of those nigh-useless powers. In theory, with the stat buffs from this ability any player could solo the Black King, or a God-Tier Speaker of the Void, or a ringwraith, or anything. Issue is, the activation conditions are long enough that they’re over 8k lines of code alone, and tie in a lot of systems that aren’t in the release version of Sburb. Shipping, Gardening, there may be a reference to the Mendicant in there, something about tessellation bees? We’re talking something so complex that even the gamebreaking community nutjobs (you know, the really crazy ones) have written it off as a pointless endeavor. Just don’t worry about it. 

Addendum: Actually, if you want to begin on game breaking, go into the Sepulchritude code, choose an activation requirement, and follow it up. This thing is wound up in this game enough, and big enough, that there’s lots of leads in it that no one has dug into yet. I heard a rumor that the underling-training minigame thing actually dates back to something found in the Sepulchritude code, for instance. 

**Casting Capstone:** Determination. This ability is also really specific in its usage, but it’s possible to actually get and the power auto-casts when they’re met. It’s based on the power of the opponent, the context, and you need to be alone, but this power DOES work and when it works your victory is assured. Basically, it’s a stupidly powerful self-resurrection effect. As long as you refuse to die, you don’t die. The issue is that the requirements for this power are extremely picky, and as a result it will never activate when up against a Denizen or the Black King or Queen. However, Ringwraiths, Demons, and some “Virus” threats can be big enough to trigger it. Issue is that if this is triggering, you’re most likely the only player left alive in your session. So… again, don’t worry about it. 


	22. Aspects-Life

#  **Life**

Life is likely one of the most sought after aspects, everyone wants a healer in their game, but it can be uphill to play. A lot of Life powers are way too specific to be useful, even though the ones that are useful are honestly useful. 

Life is kind of-sort of neutral on the Physical/Metaphysical line. You can go either way you want, but you’re going to get healing no matter what. Physical? Tree of Life power. Metaphysical? Font of Life power. You’re going to be a healer, even Thieves and Princes. 

**Physical:** Life likes to be connected to plants and the earth. When you’re not straight healing people (which, again, you’re going to be doing a lot) you’re going to be making custom plants that do what you need them to do. I’m not really an expert on this angle, I’m kind of Metaphysically biased in general, but I have heard that even the cripplingly specific physical powers have some amount of use. Sure, the buff of Megaflora only works if you’re up against a titanic enemy, but making a giant tree at will can have its own uses, and a lot of guides recommend using these powers for those side-uses over the main ones. 

If nothing else you can pretty up your pad with your Life-assigned plant. Most people seem to be pretty happy with their Life-plant, I notice. Personally, mine is a sundew, and while that’s a little creepy it’s also crazy awesome. 

**Metaphysical:** as said in the Blood guide, Life is the Birth/Rebirth part of Birth/Life/Death/Rebirth. When not just healing things, Life can also start and on occasion remake things. While blood has some difficulty doing stuff like healing old wounds, because they’ve been a part of the person’s life, Life can clear that stuff right up. Chronic diseases? Embarrassingly easy for Life to fix. If you think your body is lame and you want it tuned up, talk to a Life player. Any good Life caster can give you a new start, especially with a Blood player assisting. 

Speaking of the first day of the rest of your life, there’s actually powers that give people who have recently died and were brought back somehow big stat boosts for a long time! Most people don’t know about them, partially because those Life powers are terribly named, and partially because most of the time they’re useless so no one ever talks about them. 

In addition, if you’re a mad scientist and want to literally create life, Life is the aspect to start from. I’m not sure where you’d get the raw materials, though. Actually, if you’re clever with Life and/or Blood, you’d be able to get a lot of spare parts fast, and Consorts are eager to volunteer for most anything. Know what, I’m going to stop thinking about this, this is way too disturbing for me to ponder. But I just know that someone is going to try something now…

**Arc:** Life’s arc likes to have some starts. Life generally has a better start than normal, and if there’s big events in the player’s Arc, Life also gives the Arc a boost after those. That’s pretty much it. Pretty easy. 

Addendum: Okay, here’s something big: Life ALSO gives a HUGE Roleplay boost if helping some other player after they’ve gone through something big. Especially if that something big was heavily damaging and traumatizing. At that point you’re healing them (emotionally if not literally) and hitting the ‘rebirth’ notes, giving your Roleplay Coefficient a giant bonus. That is really good information! I mean, every Life player I know did that anyway, because it was their jobs, but it’s nice to get some recognition! 

**Caster Capstone:** Resurrection. Let’s get this up front: the Life caster capstone is to literally bring someone back to life from PERMAdeath. The details vary, sometimes it’s with no small text, sometimes it’s inside a day, or three days (wow, subtle there), or a week. Sometimes you need their corpse, or their head, or to be somewhere important to them or where they died. The details vary a lot, yes, but when it comes down to it, there’s only one limitation that’s both very important and consistent: You get one Resurrection per player. Everyone only gets ONE extra life from you, it’s a strange database setup that no one’s been able to crack for abuse yet. In any case, learn your Resurrection ability’s limitations and be able to use it when called upon. 

Addendum: Not quite everyone gets an extra life from you: You don’t. The power can only be cast when the target is dead, and you can’t cast when you’re dead. So, be careful. 

**Combat Capstone:** You do not get Resurrection. Please, feel free to take this moment to mope. 

You instead get a self-Rez power that’s very similar. Tell me if you’ve heard this before: Character has a power where if they use it, and then die inside the duration, they instead don’t die. It’s that, but instead of having a window of a few seconds the window is several hours and the power is pretty easy to keep up all the time if desired. Again, there’s a limit on the number of revivals from this power, but it’s a simple flag inside your body. This means a few things: 

  1. If your body later permanently dies and is brought back (Dream self shift, God Tier ascension, God Tier immortality, etc) you can use it again: the new body has the flag to off, so you can use it again. 
  2. A good Heart player can fondle your shiny and re-set the flag. This is apparently a possible procedure, but a very tricky one. 
  3. A good Rage player can force the flag to re-set. This is less tricky for the Rage player, but also very unpleasant for the life player.



As a result, though it is still limited, it’s much less limited. You can get several revives out of it, and if you’re God Tier, theoretically infinite. However, this ability kicks in before the Conditional Immortality check, so even if you would have recovered from the death you lose your use of the capstone. 

Addendum: To be clear, you can cast this ability as many times as you want, but the full effect can only kick in once per life. After it revives you once, you’re no longer an eligible target for it unless you switch to the next life or otherwise reset the flag.


	23. Aspects-Light

#  **Light**

Light is an Aspect I both like and dislike. That’s not even touching on the community, for every reasonable Light player there seems to be luck master stat guy who is insufferable. Just in general this Aspect has a lot of balls in the air, and they’re all almost entirely metaphysical balls so we don’t even need to worry about physical vs metaphysical too much. It’s just a very complex aspect with connections to luck, and as a result it’s far less consistent than everyone likes to believe. 

**Physical:** Physically, it’s all about literal light. However, due to the strong metaphysical bias it doesn’t come up much. I think there’s one laser attack (which is generally worse than just using a ranged weapon), one flash effect (Which is honestly useful), and then a free illumination effect. That’s it, that’s all that Light does physically. If you’re a physically-biased player, you’re not going to have fun here. 

**Metaphysical:** Light is a lot of things. It’s about luck. It’s also about knowledge and clarity. And about freedom and presence. Light is about a lot of things, and of all of these Luck is by far the worst one to rely on. 

If you listen closely you can hear the irrational Light fanboys booing. 

The rational Light fanboys will back me up: luck is just luck. You can stack it all you want, but there’s going to be times when it just isn’t relevant. There’s going to be times when it just doesn’t work. There’s going to be situations where luck literally can’t help enough. And there’s always that chance that it fails. Maybe it’s 1/10, or 1/100, or 1/1x10^24, but the chance is always there. And it’s a well-known fact that Sburb loves to casually hit those impossible odds. If you rely on luck, you’re going to roll badly sooner or later. 

Knowledge, clarity, and freedom, however? I love me some knowledge, clarity, and freedom.

See, in a lot of ways, Light is still about luck, but it’s also about making your own luck. It’s about knowing what to do to give yourself the best chance. It’s about knowing what the best situation is, and putting yourself there. It’s about understanding the situation, having the clarity to know what to do, and doing it. 

And that is what sets a pro light player apart from lady luck light players. Luck players bank on everything going right. Light players make everything go right.

**Freedom, Light vs Breath:** Light and Breath both have connections to freedom. This isn’t the only overlap like this, but it may be the most confusing. With Life and Blood, you can make differences across the cycle. With Rage and Heart, the difference between emotions and passion is finicky but findable. But both Light and Breath have a fair claim to ‘freedom’. Even in mechanics this shows: while Breath has travel powers, Light commonly gives speed boosts to travel powers, and as a result sometimes the Light player is faster than the Breath or Space player. 

But isn’t there some connection, anyway? Light and wind can both be made, but not really contained. They are both energy, and they are both fairly well everywhere. They’re great tools, and they are natural forces. If you open a door a little crack, light enters the room and improves visibility even indirectly. If you open a door a little crack, a breeze breaks the stillness of the air, giving the entire room new life.

While nothing can stop Breath, Light wants to be at a specific place at a specific time. Breath can’t be contained, Light can’t be kept away. And that I think is where the difference is.

Breath can’t be contained, it’s a force of nature. Light can’t be detained, it has a goal. 

Thankfully, this isn’t a big deal. People may talk about Light vs Breath, but when it boils down to it and you put a Light player and a Breath player in the same room, they don’t fight. Because fighting would hold them back. And when the Breath player wants to get into the place the Light player wants to be… well, you thought they were hard to stop separately? Together I’m not sure anything could slow them down.

Interestingly, Light also has some healing powers, but NOT ones that restore straight health. Basic ones just dispel debuffs, but the advanced ones can permanently restore lost functionality. The biggest example is abilities that restore sight or other senses, but Light can also restore movement or even heal mental damage. I think this is related to that idea of freedom, that idea of not being stopped. Because physical damage can prevent you from being where you need to be, make those opportunities harder to capitalize on. As a result, Light as a support aspect is surprisingly good at keeping a team in fighting shape, even if it can’t supply in-combat healing.

I think Breath doesn’t have healing because mere scars don’t matter and can’t hold it back or something. That or having it be both dodge central and healing was definitely OP. 

**Arc:** Light has a really good effect on an Arc if used properly. With light, everything has the potential to be that much smoother, iron out some of the kinks as it were. But I notice that you can’t use Light to really prevent falls or dips, just smooth them down a little. Your arc is just more efficient. Because when it all boils down to it, luck doesn’t matter.

**Combat Capstone:** Dance of thorns is a misunderstood power. Yes, it gives you an amazing luck boost, but it also gives a kind of limited combat prescience, telling you what you have to do for the best possible outcome. Still, try to avoid doing this around allies: all that danger being directed around you can still harm those near you. You basically become a luck black hole for the duration: All the good fortune is taken into you, and everyone else suffers for it. This is fine when around enemies, but there is no friendly fire option in Sburb and allies can get caught in the crossfire, too.

**Casting Capstone:** Photon Roulette. You know that RPG where one character has powers based on slots or something? This is that. The exact effects of this vary based on the situation, but for the most part I hate this power. I hate it with a burning passion. 

You know Murphy’s Law? Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, at the worst possible moment? This power is that law in motion. The details vary, sometimes it’s a literal roulette wheel, sometimes it’s one of those pie chart wheels that spins, sometimes it’s a deck of cards, sometimes it’s slots. In any case, the total damage is VERY random, the extra effects are random, the buffs are random, and whether the result is ultimately a good thing is random. There are self-destructive results on the wheel, either doing the damage rolled to you, or placing a status effect on you, or worse. And yes, your Light-based luck bonus does change the result. It’s a good thing, too, by raw there’s 50% bad results in the power. 

A lot of Light players like to make ‘you feeling lucky?’ jokes. Personally, I don’t think it matters whether you feel lucky. If you flip that coin enough times, it’s going to come up on tails sooner or later. And, Murphy’s Law, it’ll be that one time you really didn’t want to take that extra damage.


	24. Aspects-Mind

#  **Mind**

Mind is an Aspect that is both really creepy and really good. Creepy because of mind-reading and mind-helping and a good Mind player’s weird ability to figure out what you’ll do even though they shouldn’t know why you made that decision. Really good because even a halfway decent Mind player can act as a terrifying force multiplier for a band of players. Mind is definitely biased toward Metaphysical manifestations, but that’s likely just as well because a sharpened consciousness is far, far more dangerous in a session than lightning. 

**Physical:** Those few times when physical Mind powers come up at all, it’s lightning. Kind of funny looking lightning, though. I once heard it was ‘synaptic’ lightning, like an external manifestation of the neurological activity in the Mind player’s brain. That said, it’s likely to only come up if you Freestyle something, but in theory if you Freestyle it right you can get pretty effective powers, much more so than physical Light powers. So technically Mind doesn’t have as strong a bias as Light, but there’s just no pre-made physical mind powers? Seems confusing to me. 

**Metaphysical:** Hooo boy. Mind Aspect gives you Professor X psychic powers. Telepathy, mind reading, control if you’re a little evil, detecting minds at range. That’s the obvious bit. But it’s more than that: It’s also about understanding the people around you, what they’ll do, why they do it. It’s about knowing how the game reacts, and about science and math, and how they all come together. It is in a way the art of cause and effect, knowing how to cause what effect. 

See, in theory Mind players and Light players should get along really well: Mind players figure out what needs to happen for a specific outcome, and light players make it happen. The issue is a lot of casual Light players lean on luck so much that they add chaos to the system instead of removing it, and that often makes Mind players angry. Don’t ask a Mind player how much real random chance there is in Sburb. They will slap you, because that random chance is what they hate. Mind players love large sessions with lots of players, because each player reacts a specific way to specific stimuli, and the more players there are, the more control can be exerted over the session. 

Okay, that’s generalizing a bit, some Mind players really prefer to have just one pawn, or maybe two, but in any case even when assigned something other than Seer they often play a Seer-like role. 

However, you may be saying to yourself “Oh sweet (your species here) jegus, not another session management role, this session already has a Knight, a Time player, a Maid, and a Seer! We don’t need more people managing nonsense, we need someone who can actually kill stuff and accomplish things!” Fear not, Mind can be a flexible role. While Mind Aspect combatants get the short end of the stick in terms of powers, as part of the Mind role is understanding they can get to understand how NPCs will act in combat. You know the one time in that one comic or animated series when the hero is fighting a mind reader and can’t touch him? Mind can do that. It’s called combat-reading and there’s a lot of powers that give variations of it. 

Now, the trouble with combat classes doing that is that it’s not efficient for them, but for the most part against underlings they don’t need to use the good powers. As far as a Mind player is concerned underlings telegraph every blow like a boss monster in a kiddy game. Mind doesn’t have a lot of combat powers, but those that do affect combat directly are pretty powerful, so there’s actually a lot of contention over whether Mind is a just bad combat Aspect or just a really hard combat Aspect. Personally, I understand why some people Freestyle up some lightning powers, it’d be a lot easier than wrestling with the Mind combat powers themselves. 

Also, if you don’t want to be slapped in the face, don’t ask Mind players about Pale Rapture. Just don’t. 

**Arc:** …wait, is there anything about the Arc I didn’t mention in the power stuff? Nope, think I got everything. Mind doesn’t blatantly affect the arc as much as it makes it more complex. 

**Capstones:** It’s common to pretend that Mind players don’t have capstones. In fact, add the Mind Capstones to the list of things that Mind players will slap you about. They’re really powerful, REALLY powerful, but no one uses them because they drive players crazy. Not even like ‘several uses over time’ or ‘if you put too much stress on it in a single casting,’ Mind capstones can drive Mind players crazy just in a single experimental casting with no stress. That’s not the reason that Mind players get testy over them, though. The reason they get testy is that the capstones are just overkill versions of normal Mind abilities. There’s not likely to be a situation where that level of power is needed, especially since Mind players really specialize in examining the effects of decisions, meaning that a Mind player not only knows what exactly will happen if she goes crazy, she knows what her other options are and the results of those. Using a capstone is not likely to be a Mind player’s plan B, or C, or F. It’s likely to be closer to ZARQY. 

Addendum: No, I don’t know what the capstones actually do. Anytime I try to look up what they do I find examinations of the psychological disorders they leave in their wake. I met someone who used a Mind capstone once. It was like having a six year old with chuck Norris fighting ability as a co-player. According to what I read she used to be maybe the smartest person in Sburb, she was a pinnacle of the gamebreaking community and recognized as a cultural ambassador by the troll Sgrub culture. Her co-players from the previous session were happy that she had recovered from the coma. 

It doesn’t matter what the capstones are supposed to do. Their legacy is that they’re worse than full frontal lobotomies.


	25. Aspects-Rage

#  **Rage**

Rage! I’m always surprised about how people are nervous about Rage. Sure, Rage players are scary, but they seem to have a reputation as player killers! I say that’s nonsense, in my experience Time players are most likely to go PK. That said, that’s counting doomed timeline Time players who are unhinged. If you look at the sheer statistics, Princes are the most common PK candidate, especially first-time players or players who’ve never played Prince before. 

I digress, I have too much to say about the Rage aspect to get hung up on spurious rumors. 

This is my native aspect, and as a result I am VERY biased toward it. I try to be a tough love fan more than a blind love fan, but this is by far my favorite aspect bar none. In any case, I’ll try to keep the fangirl squealing down to a dull roar. 

I can’t go lower than that, though. And this being Rage, I’m still liable to down out some rock concerts. 

**Meta vs Physics:** Rage doesn’t have really a physical part to it, because (a little like Hope) it’s all about taking the metaphysical and plopping it straight into the physical. Literally, Rage is about taking what you want and making it just happen. Slow internet? GO FASTER. Enemies? EXPLODE. Stupid puzzles? EXPLODE. Allies out of energy? MORE POWER. PKer? EXPLODE. Consorts being insufferable? QUIET. It’s basically the aspect of telling reality what to do and reality being too scared to talk back.

A lot of people directly connect Rage to beating and shouting, and while Rage is pretty liberal with combat bonuses, it’s true, and Rage has some sonic attacks, also true, neither is needed. A lot of Rage powers are about giving orders to things, and having the chutzpa to back it up. While shouting is the default way to get that across, a good Rage player doesn’t need to shout. Spoken words, a quirked eyebrow, a gesture, or even just an act of will can be enough to put a Rage power into effect. Making noise or movement helps focus the command into a more tangible force, because the human mind is really connected into how the body works. 

This ability is really amazing and tons of fun, but you still need to be careful. Some game abstractions are set to just Rage-fail instead of doing what they’re told, specifically some of the alchemical devices and the giant healing crystals. These items will commonly explode if you Rage at them. It can be very dangerous if not expected, or weaponized if it is, but replacing the crystals is nigh-impossible and the alchemy equipment can be expensive.

In addition, be aware that Rage and line of effect is a shaky relationship. You can target Rage powers to anywhere you have influence. That’s not only places that can see you or hear you directly, but also places that can hear your voice over a speaker or see you over a screen. You can even imbue Rage into text, whether written or typed, and that can be dangerous if you’re not careful to specify UNDERLINGS: EXPLODE. Instead of just EXPLODE. 

Don’t Rage at allies! Rage can be just as damaging and invasive as misused Mind powers, and it’s much easier to damage allies accidentally with Rage. I’d recommend just keeping a clear idea of your fellow players as friends, and orders like EXPLODE directed exclusively at your enemies. 

As for ally orders, just keep to the usual buff etiquette. For the most part no one cares if you throw a buff on them with no side-effect, but some players don’t like that. The usual rules of clarifying buff etiquette in the first team meeting stand. For the most part, command buffs are really simple and straightforward, but Rage’s other powers often do have side-effects, so be aware of them and make sure to clarify them with your friends. 

Also, be aware of your wording. “FIGHT MORE” and “HIT HARDER” will both increase a target’s attack power, but “FIGHT MORE” will also affect their emotional state and they may not appreciate it. Even if your version of Sburb doesn’t have Psy-Buffs, it’s very easy for Rage to alter someone else’s emotional state. 

Actually, if your version does have Psy-Buffs, ignore them. The Rage Psy-Buffs have a lot of baggage and aren’t long-term viable. 

**Shouting:** Rage’s damage type of choice is sonic. You don’t see them used much, but there are some basic powers with sonic damage and the mechanics are in the system to Freestyle new powers. For the most part, however, it’ll be more productive to have a ranged weapon option and the Rage combat buffs. 

**Beating:** Rage has a lot of combat self-buffs, many of which are auto-cast abilities based on certain states of mind. This is why Rage players get stronger when really mad. However, these powers also encourage the Rage player to stay in that same mood, making it hard to wind down. For this reason (and the capstone, if you have a capstone class) I’d strongly recommend Freestyling some variants to be based on things other than anger and/or managing carefully which powers have autouse on. 

Addendum: Since people have asked, I generally choose ‘combat focus’ as the alternate requirement. Remember, it doesn’t need to be an emotion, just a state of mind as long as it’s intense. 

**Arc:** Rage generally just makes your arc more extreme. That’s the connection to passion, Rage loves to do everything in a BIG way, and the Arc is no exception. So, if you’re a Seer, Prince, or Mage… yeah, it’s going to SUCK. 

**Capstone:** Rage’s capstone is AAAAAAAAGH arrrrgh AAAAAAAAGH! This is a very complex capstone, and was poorly understood until how it interacts with Page and Maid was examined. Both casters and combat classes have the same capstone, which makes sense given how flexible it is. 

So, there are certain pairs between combat and caster stats, combat damage vs ability damage, etc. For each pair finds the better stat between the two and buffs the lower one to that point. It then puts you into the perfect state of mind for ALL your auto-cast buffs to be active, even if it would be paradoxical, and then throws a few more buffs on top for good measure. 

Basically, it makes you into a hugely overpowered and very angry combat/caster hybrid. Plus, given that it’s Rage, just because you run out of energy doesn’t mean that you stop using powers. You stop caring about STUPID THINGS like PHYSICAL POSSIBILITY or CAUSE AND EFFECT. Not to mention that on that list of auto-buffs is Infinite Rage, which means that you’re getting stronger as you go. In addition, any buff that only applies to a caster stat is also applied to the equal combat stat or vice-versa. 

Oh, by the way, remember how it’s hard to wind down when having those auto-cast powers running? Yeah, that stays true here. This is why I recommend customizing your auto-cast powers if you have capstone access: If you’re focused and angry instead of just angry, people don’t need to worry about you razing villages or breaking things. If your Rage player uses the capstone, help them with the fight and then get out of the way and let them run off to gallivant over the planet in question making angry noises. They should get back to you in a few hours.

At least, hope they do. If this capstone runs with infinite rage for too long, the player can explode. It’s not a pretty thing. In case of emergency, a good hug should help calm them down. 

**Shout Back:** If you have a Rage player who’s being bossy and abusing their Aspect, shout back. Rage is all about force of will and personality, and if you go NO hard enough you should be able to negate a Rage order directly targeting you. Personally, I prefer NO YOU, which has a chance to actually bounce the order back. Most likely this will just knock the Rage player onto their hind, but if they’re shaky enough (and if you’re Ragey enough) it could turn the power around completely. 

Then again, Rage Reversal might be really hard unless you have played a Rage title. For the most part, a solid NO is your best bet.  

Addendum: due to some session generation stuff, session leaders have their force of personality artificially inflated. As a result, it’s much easier for them to Rage-Counter. 


	26. Aspects-Space

#  **Space**

Space is a very important Aspect that’s more than a little uphill to narratively examine. This is mainly because everything that Space does is choked with frogs. There’s also some weird connection to fertility and birth, but not Life’s rebirth angle? I admit, other than Void this is the Aspect I understand the least. I’ll try, though. In my defense you don’t NEED to get it to be a good Space player, you just need to be good at herding frogs. 

**Physical:** Telekinesis YEAH DAWG. Teleportation, too! These alone make it almost worth the Frog Breeding. Sure, the cooldowns and energy requirements are really high, but those times when you can abuse it, you abuse it and it’s tons of fun. TONNES of fun. 

**Metaphysical:** There’s the connection to existence, and maybe reproduction? I keep trying to think back to what I’ve heard about the metaphysical stuff behind Space, and the conversations kept devolving into Frog conversations. The fact that Space is pretty physical-biased doesn’t help (maybe the single most physical-biased Aspect in the game) but the frogs keep coming up. I’ve never been a Space player, but I’ve been a Knight, and those Space players and their Aspect keeps coming back to frogs. I’ve seen a Space player unlock a relatively cheap short-range teleport and be all AW YES THIS WILL MAKE GETTING FROGS SO MUCH EASIER. Then I asked him whether being a Space player was really just all about the Frogs. 

He didn’t answer because he was too busy crying. 

That crack up there? “You don’t need to get it to be a good space player, you just need to be good at herding frogs”? I didn’t make that up. That and variations of that are literally the only answer I get to “do you understand the Space aspect” from good Space players. 

And I’ve seen some musings out there that imply that some people do get it. Get it as well as anyone can get an aspect in Sburb, anyway, but even those people who get it, you ask them “What’s the point of Space?” and they will always, always, always answer “Frogs.”

Because most of the time Space players are too busy with frogs to honestly become Space players. Frog-Breeding is like a forty hour a week job, it’s their nine to five. Wait, it’s 56 hours, isn’t it, since they go in on weekends, too. Their land quest is frogs. Their consorts talk about frogs. They always need to first free the frogs, or bring back the frogs, and then they need to sort the frogs, tag the frogs, cross examine the frogs, it’s like the stupidest breeding game ever. 

And it doesn’t stop. When they finally get that rave party tadpole, and they pop that thing in a tank of water and put it into their Sylladex, their smiles aren’t elated or contented. They’re numb. They’re numb from doing nothing but frogs for so long. 

That’s why I recommend the Knight hand the Space player a baseball bat when the breeding is done. Just let some of that bad mojo out. Let them cry, let them scream, let them smash the glass tubes and light the slime on fire. Let them kick every single frog out of the lab, look away when they say they have something special in mind for certain ones. Let them laugh, let them nap. 

Then, when they wake up, pick them up, and help them get back into life.  

**Arc:** FROGS

**Caster Capstone:** Black Hole. The only time I’ve ever heard of this Capstone being used well was once when after breeding a Space player used it to clean up all the frogs. 

**Combat Capstone:** Unstoppable/Unmovable. Basically, the Player chooses one and they are that for the duration. Doesn’t commonly see use on account of the fact that it’s not very useful in frog breeding. 


	27. Aspects-Time

#  **Time**

Ugh. Time. This is definitely one of my top three most hated Aspects. Tough contention, too. Now, Time is a really cool aspect with lots of power and a wide variety of abilities with good scaling and is very good for both Caster and Combat classes, but it’s not fun to be a Time player. 

Managing the Time stuff in a session is a big workload. Sure, it’s not the same kind of monotonous drag that Frog Breeding is, but it’s still quite overwhelming if you don’t know how to do it. If you are assigned the Time Aspect, look up guides on Timeline Management, Dead Self Management, Plot Charts, and Stress Management. That is the bare minimum that you want to understand to get by. I will not be covering these topics here, instead this will be my usual smattering of trivia that’s nigh-useless to an actual Time player. Sorry for wasting your time, Time players, I know it’s at a premium. 

**Physical:** Pretty typical Time tricks, time travel abuse as seen in most fiction isn’t viable, but slowing or stopping time for enemies? Speeding up time for yourself? Repeat or rewind tricks? All possible. Some amount of time travel abuse is possible if you correctly set up stable loops, but those aren’t generally viable for combat. As a general rule, there’s something for everyone in Time, it’s just a matter of making it happen without extra corpses. 

**Metaphysical:** Time has connections to entropy, rot, decay, and the gradual failure of all things. We’re talking about age, rust, starvation, sometimes disease, all that harrowing stuff. And a good Metaphysically-inclined player can use that to good effect. Sure, damage over time effects aren’t glamorous, but the Time aspect has the unique ability of altering clock ticks for effects: They can change how long effects last. Make buffs last longer, debuffs shorter, and slow down damage over time on allies to make it more manageable or speed it up on enemies to kill them faster. 

Personally, messing with clock ticks is my favorite use of the Time Aspect. With a little clockspeed changing, you can make Sburb flip out pretty badly. You know the farming quest that no one ever does because it takes three real-time months? Clockspeed change. You know the funky beds that cause a coma? Clockspeed change. Friend way too low on energy? Clockspeed change specifically on his recovery rate. With a little knowledge of game mechanics and some Freestyling, you can freeze an enemy in place and still speed up and burn out all their buffs. If an ability takes energy over time, you can decrease the energy usage without affecting the output of the ability. Honestly, clockspeed shenanigans are the main reason I follow gamebreaking. There’s always new and interesting things you can completely ruin by un-synching some timers. 

Actually, clockspeed powers break a lot of puzzles, too, especially ones based around time travel. If you want a leg up on the dungeons for Time players, Clockspeed is the way to go. 

Addendum: Everyone calm down. Clockspeed isn’t that complex of stuff. Just ask Native time players and experts, it’s really an essential part of the Aspect. You can go through a session without it, but you’re really just shooting yourself in the foot. 

Addendum 2 : So, uh, apparently Clockspeed is the single most difficult Time trick to discover, much less master, and a lot of people thought I was being an ass on purpose. And now people are clamoring for me to make a guide on it. I don’t think I can, guys? I just knew enough about computer programming to have an idea of what Clockspeed is, noticed that Time Infusions mess with it, and ran with it from there. 

Addendum 3 : Apparently Time Infusions don’t mess with Clockspeed, nor do what I thought were Clockspeed abilities, those are just duration modifiers. I just didn’t know they weren’t Clockspeed abilities so I used them to learn Clockspeed stuff despite the fact that they weren’t? I don’t know, guys. I don’t know. 

**Casting Capstone:** Prison of the Ages is a special time-stop power that ignores all resistances and effects that might stop it. It’s expensive to cast, but costs nothing to maintain, and can be maintained as long as the Time Player concentrates. That’s the rub, then: they need to concentrate on it and that pretty well keeps them from doing anything else. In addition, it’s a ‘do no damage, take no damage’ kind of stasis effect, limiting the usage. The imprisoned target can’t do anything, nor can anything happen to the target. It’s more or less bought time, and sometimes that’s what you need. 

**Combat Capstone:** It’s a stable time loop combat power. While it seems underpowered, the truth is that the energy cost is more like a common power, so the Time player can us it whenever they want. Also, it’s a STABLE loop power, so it’s impossible to interrupt because if it was interrupted the loop wouldn’t be stable, right? This is the one time that temporal causality is batting in the Time Player’s corner, and you bet they’ll make the most of it. 


	28. Aspects-The Scottish Aspect

#  **Un**

Permit me to take this moment to partake in a thought exercise. I’ve made this entirely hypothetical Aspect, and would like to discuss it here. Any resemblances to real aspects are entirely coincidental and likely entirely in your head. If you are suspicious that this is an attempt to talk about a real aspect that doesn’t like to be talked about, don’t be, it definitely isn’t. If you see parallels of some sort, that’s fine, but don’t project those onto me. 

**Physical:** Physically, this Aspect is about nothingness. This is about as intuitive as it sounds. It’s unclear if this strictly hypothetical aspect has a metaphysical bias or if no one is able to understand nothingness well enough to use it properly. 

**Metaphysical:** What is nothingness from a metaphysical point of view? What is empty space in legends and lore? What does it mean to use the very essence of Un (the not-real aspect we are discussing) to do stuff? My understanding is shaky, but my theory is that it winds up reversing what should happen. If you ‘Un-steal’ something, you wind up giving the person something. If you ‘Un-destroy’ something, you make something. As a result, every single Un class is completely counterintuitive. Just ask the native players (that don’t exist because this isn’t a real Aspect), they are the most in-step with it and they sure don’t know what’s going on. 

In a way, the less someone claims to understand about not-connected-to-any-real-aspect Un, the better they seem to get it. 

**Arc:** as a non-existent Aspect about nothing, Un has likely the single most impressive effect on an Arc. A part of the Arc will be missing. Not a small part, either, it can be the entire building part of the Heir, or the Mage’s fall, or the Prince’s good start, or any number of things. Basically, it makes prior experience with the class useless, which… might be refreshing, I guess? But likely not worth it to have to figure out how your new inverted powers work.

**Combat Capstone:** Un, if it existed, which it does not, does not have a combat capstone. Or, it does, but it’s not available. All that anyone would ever see of it if it existed would be an internal reference ID number. Wow, it’s almost like some aspect that really likes to erase data erased it. That would be incredibly stupid. Good thing that this isn’t a real situation at all that leaves combat classes who were hoping for a capstone to make sense their bass-ackwards aspect powers. Good thing this isn’t at all a real Aspect in any way, shape, or form!

**Casting Capstone:** It would be called ‘We Ran Out of CD Space.’ If a power with this name exists in the game, I don’t know about it. It’s not like there’s any guides out there that are massively useless because of something erasing vast amounts of them. With the discovery of the Session Disk, a rare item that sometimes spawns in the Skaian mendicant, this becomes terrifying. Good thing this is a fake power in a fake Aspect that does not exist! To my knowledge, no one has been stupid enough to try it. More likely, however, if they have, they haven’t been able to record what it does. 

“You know, this would all be fine if this Aspect was just a pain, but it’s really fun to be an Un player,” I would write if this Aspect existed, which it doesn’t, “but as is if you’re a capstone class, you really need to figure out how to maximize you powers to actually do to be able to keep up with anyone else. However, if you CAN master those powers, you without a doubt become the most powerful player in the game, just from a really wonky point of view.”

Alas, this Aspect does not exist. Furthermore, I’m not upset about anything disappearing from my guide after hours of research made excruciatingly difficult due to a destructively overeager all-present censorship force. Not at all. 

#  **The Scottish Aspect**

Void is a pain. It doesn’t like people to talk about it. It even messed up my heading there. Know what? It’s now The Scottish Aspect. I hope Scottish Aspect players have fun, because Scottish Aspect writers lose their carefully-written stuff all the time.

Up yours, The Scottish Aspect. Up yours. 


	29. Corruption Notes

#  **Corruption**

I don’t consider myself a Corruption expert, but other people apparently do? Since I just shrug it off like water off a duck. I don’t think ignoring it is the best way to learn about corruption, and it has nothing to do with the classes, but I might as well give the people what they want. 

If you have an honest problem with corruption, this is not the guide for you. Yep, turns out that the ‘Corruption expert’ is telling you to talk to someone else. The Sburb Glitch FAQ actually has a really good breakdown of corruption stuff, you just need to jump through the hoops to get the timetrav encryption to work right. I do have a little to add, but consider this supplementary data on that. 

##  **Corrupted Aspect Powers**

When you have someone with a high level of corruption and fair caster stats, but NOT completely given over to the corrupting influence involved, you get corrupted Aspect powers. These powers operate under the same line of logic as the powers of the player’s original Aspect, but without the aspect and instead with the corrupted energy. They tend to be like warped parodies of the powers involved, but they do more damage and have different fine rules. A vision mode based on seeing someone’s emotional state (a variant of which is in both Heart and Rage) might change to specifically see that person’s susceptibility to corruption. A buff power that gives added movement speed would still give added movement speed, but instead of running faster their legs move at the same rate and they just move faster. Oddly, these powers generally don’t spread corruption, EXCEPT buffs and healing powers. But for the most part, Corrupted players aren’t casting those on non-corrupted players. 

These are NOT the powers that the Speaker or Singer kick out: Those are non-Sburb powers that act a little like pure high-end Freestyling without limits. This is part of why they’re so unpredictable, Speakers and Singers have no limits on their choices of powers, so they can do anything, whether it’s connected to their game role or not. On the other hand, corrupted Aspect powers are more like the Sburb ruleset subverted by the corrupting energies. They’re still very dangerous, but a player at this level of corruption is often at least somewhat recoverable, and isn’t even necessarily murderous yet. 

Addendum: For some reason, players with access to corrupted time powers don’t time travel. Therefore, either they can’t time travel (which doesn’t make sense to me, they seem able to do most other things) or they choose not to for some reason. In fact, has anyone asked the Others about their understanding of time travel? Maybe they just don’t get it. 

Addendum Addendum: Checked myself, Others claim that time travel is ‘A foul fracturing process, crude and unrefined’. I did not ask for what a more refined version would be, Corruption risk. According to a (self-declared) Angel expert, Angels literally do not understand Time Travel, it’s outside of their mental capability, but I’m not sure where they got their information or how sane they were at the time. 

Addendum 3 : Okay, so… apparently one of my readers went Singer and wrote a long tirade about how Time Travel is unknowable and not meant to exist. At least that’s all I got after the filters chewed through it, sakes alive. So, yeah, Others think that Time Travel is crude and Angels think that it’s witchcraft, so both discourage their pawns from using it (most of the time). 

##  **Things That Are Corruption Free (Despite How it May Seem)**

**Any Warhammer material:** I am well aware how paradoxical this is.

**Any Warhammer 40k material:** in fact, mixing something with a Caiphias Cain book removes corruption.

**D &D and Pathfinder material:** Maybe the amount of Angels, Demons, and horrible gribblies balances out?

**Religious imagery directly related to Easter or Christmas:** Angels hate the stuff. Pictures depicting angels are safe as long as they also show Jesus

**Crucifixes:** Seriously, if done right you can use one to ward off an Angel. Are we sure these aren’t vampires?

**Trilobites:** Mentioned because the Others really hate the things

**Phyrexians from MTG:** In fact most MTG cards are safe.

**Hello Kitty**

**Terraria:** Good thing, too, you can get a LOT of really nice gear from this.

##  **Things That Carry Corruption (But are Weird About it)**

**Platinum Angel from MTG: Very** strong Angel charge, only passes onto defensive gear

**Nemesis of Reason from MTG:** Very strong Others charge, combining with any item results in an unrelated item with a very strong Others charge. 

**MTG in General:** I’m not clear on the relationship, but apparently most cards are safe and some are dangerous? And it’s less related to their fluff and more to meta stuff? Not sure. 

**Yu-Gi-Oh:** Apparently every single card carries an extremely minute charge, either kind, but complete Decks (tournament legal or not) don’t. That said, this doesn’t seem to be a big issue since combining anything with a YGO card just makes another YGO card. 

**Fallen London:** Others Corruption, but seems to impose a maximum Corruption rate or something? If you’re going to get Corruption no matter what, some Fallen London stuff might be a good idea.

**Don’t Starve:** Only if you use it to make food. Which, alchemized food in Sburb is lame anyway? Who figured this out?

##  **Things That Are Corruption Free (But Still Seem Dangerous)**

**Bloodborne:** Stuff from Bloodborne loves to give Blood, Doom, and Light Aspect Infusions, but there’s some things that act a little like they’re Infused (or Corrupted) but have no Aspect Infusion (or Corruption). They lack the low cost of Corruption items, but they have some of the same inexplicable and unnerving abilities. 

**Darkest Dungeon:** Similar to the Bloodborne example, but it tends to give Life and The Scottish Aspect instead of Blood and Light. Again, there’s still something off about these items, but it’s not Corruption. And the The Scottish Aspect items in particular seem odd. It’s kind of like they’re not quite Sburb-brand The Scottish Aspect.

**Welcome to Night Vale:** Actually, for some reason, all forms of Corruption and the nightmares in the Psychoruins really, really hate WTNV. WTNV gives out a LOT of Aspect Infusions, and the stuff made from it is reliably really stylish. And even though it’s unnerving, the things made don’t feel subtly wrong in the same way that Bloodborne or Darkest Dungeon stuff does. Or, it does, but it’s a friendly kind of wrong? Hard to explain.

Addendum: Yes, it is creepy that WTNV keeps updating after the world ends and you can reliably get it in the Medium. But all the same, if you’re up against Corruption (or the Psychoruins), I feel you should take what you can get. 

Addendum 2:  **DESERT BLUFFS ITEMS ARE NOT SAFE** . Burn them, burn them fast, delete them from your registry, trust me. They’re not Corrupted. They’re just the opposite of WTNV in every way. 


	30. Random Notes-Item Quality

#  **Random Stuff**

So, Sburb has a lot of really, really badly documented stuff. This part was originally an accidental upload from my own personal notes, but people liked it really well so I’m cleaning it up and formalizing it. 

##  **Item Quality**

Sburb has a multitude of half-baked systems, including a basic item quality system. Unfortunately, nowhere in the game is the system explained or stated clearly, and there’s even some question as to how many rungs there are. For the most part, however, you want to spend most of the game slowly moving up the tiers. They are especially important for weapons and armor, and even if your strife specibus of choice is something weird, just getting better quality items will increase your power.  

Other than that, however, really the only time that it will matter is smith quests, either for the consort blacksmith or the dream moon blacksmith. These are also the only characters in the game that will give you an idea of an item’s quality, often by odd remarks. Tailors can rate clothing, but only clothing, and sometimes the game is picky about what counts as ‘clothing’. 

Addendum: Since there’s some confusion, the Derse blacksmith is actually the begoggled tinker guy. His work table is using an anvil as a support. Really, go look. 

  1. **Poor:** Item is pretty lame and you likely shouldn’t use it as a weapon, it’s liable to break. If you’re using a toy or plastic weapon, it’s likely this tier. Often derided by smiths as being cheap and/or pieces of shit. Even the consort ones, despite the fact that before their quest line this is the only tier of items they can make. 
  2. **Common:** Item is a normal item. If you were running scared through your house and picked up the first slightly manageable weapon you could find, you’re likely using this tier. It’s fine for those first few imps, but you’re going to leave it behind in your first alchemy session. Smiths will be completely unimpressed. 
  3. **Nice:** Item is a particularly good (if still mundane) example of its kind. If you’re running through your house and picked up a manageable weapon related to something that you or someone in your family is passionate about, it’s likely to be this tier. Again, though, you’re likely going to lose it pretty fast. Smiths will offer it a compliment or two, but won’t feel strongly about it.
  4. **Good:** Item is acceptable for most beginner strifes you’re going to get into. Likely what you’ll walk away from the first alchemy session with. There’s no big pressure to replace it, a high-end Good weapon should last through the first two player entries, but don’t get too attached. Smiths will approve casually. Oddly, some items in this tier are less durable than ones in the Nice tier. It implies that this entire tier system is more complex, but if you want details you’ll need to pursue an alchemy guide. 
  5. **Fine:** Item is like good items, but with better workmanship. It’s possible to jump straight to this tier in the first alchemy session if you have a Nice item to use as a base and enough grist, but it’s unlikely unless you’re a later entrant into your session. Smiths will likely give it quite a few compliments, and most of your non-combat non-aspect gear will wind up around this tier. 
  6. **Exceptional:** Item is particularly cool, often customized or otherwise rarer than Fine items. Smiths will compliment it for being rare and impressive, and this is the highest item quality that the dream moon smiths can make without completing their quests. 
  7. **Awesome:** Item is not only particularly cool and rare, but doubly so. Smiths will often call it beautiful and thank you for showing it to them. 
  8. **Superior:** Item is about the best you can get with raw alchemy. Actually, that’s a lie, there’s plenty of ways to milk more out of alchemy, but the tiers from here get a LOT harder to move up. Smiths will call it a paragon of its kind, wowed by it. 
  9. **Masterwork:** I’m not sure if this is a bug, but a lot of alchemy just skips this tier. If you want reliable loot from this tier, you’ll need to do the smith quests, because smiths CAN reliably make stuff as this tier. A lot of it is custom-made, so it’s a lot of specific stuff. Smiths (if shown an item they did not make) will commonly compliment the work at length and ask to be introduced to the person who made it. 
  10. **Epic:** Really, really good stuff. Breaking into Epic tier is kind of touchy, since you basically need to start aspect-imbuing or using certain loot items generated by Sburb to do so. While a lot of people (including Sburb itself) will make a big deal about Legendary items, high-grade Epic items are viable for the Black King fight in most sessions. Smiths will likely react to Epic items by declaring its full name out loud and saying ‘it really does exist!’ followed by a short list of related urban legends. You need to completely do a smith’s questline for them to be able to modify items at this level, and they can’t make items at this level. They can, however, modify weapons to this level if you get enough different ones to stack modifications on it. 
  11. **Legendary:** The top stuff. The infinity+1 stuff, or infinity-1 stuff, or the stuff that makes the endgame completely obsolete. Sburb really loves legendary weapons, loves handing them out, loves having the consorts circulate rumors about them. Personally, I’m almost always disappointed: The raw stats are always good, sure, but they commonly don’t have much else going for them unless they’re aspect-infused. In addition, smiths will flip out if they see these things. Issue is, Smiths will also refuse to even try to modify them because they’re so powerful and legendary. As a result, I’m stuck with a wrench that hits things impossibly hard but doesn’t do any of the useful stuff I like my wrenches to do, like break sidewalks or shoot lightning. However, if you know what to do with alchemy + smith stacking, you can stack epic weapons high enough to be as good as, or better than, most legendary ones.
  12. **Legendary+?** : There’s in theory another level that’s like legendary but even more so, with weird rules about duplicates or something? I don’t know, I’ve heard a thing or two, and sometimes the game gives these super-special awesome weapons out, and sometimes you just get the normal legendary stuff. 



In addition, some players claim there are NEGATIVE levels of quality, making impossibly terrible items that cost negative amounts of resources. Issue is that the resources in question can’t be used on anything else, and the items in question are so bad that strife specibi don’t recognize them as the relevant item type. Yes, imagine a sword so bad that a swordkind strife specibus refuses to acknowledge it. Personally I think this is either some obscure gamebreaking tactic that’s mostly pointless or maybe trolling. 


	31. Random Notes-Aspect Infusions

##  **Aspect Infused Items**

As you’re Alchemizing items, you’ll occasionally get ones that are imbued with your aspect. Usually they’re really obvious, they’re all in theme, but occasionally they’re not as obvious. If something is imbued with your aspect, you can tell when touching it. However, if you want to be sure about other aspects then you need to either use a suitable vision or scry ability, take it to a smith, or let a player of the aspect in question touch it. As a general rule, even if an item doesn’t fit the usual aesthetics, if the name seems to fit an aspect theme or it has some kind of special abilities, I get it checked. 

Most infused items will have a basic passive power, and occasionally may have a useable ability. If you can’t use an item’s usable ability, it’s because a hidden stat on you is too low, check alchemy guides for details. For the most part however, those passives are typically reason enough to use those items. 

Most Infused items will be Exceptional quality or higher, but it can happen at any level. Poor-quality items often explode anytime their powers are activated, and levels lower than Exceptional will have weaker passives than normal and more likely no active power. 

In order to get infused equipment, you ultimately use one of three means. All other means will trace back to one of these. 

**Player Infusion:** A lot of players unlock abilities that let them infuse items. For the most part, you unlock this ability by leveling the Consort Smith up enough. This is the big reason why you’re told to do the Smith quests as early as you can: between infusing and customizing from smiths, you can get exactly what you want far more reliably than trying to crack alchemy. However, if you want an item with an Aspect other than yours, you’ll either need to get another player to make it or use one of the other two methods. 

**Quintessence:** A Quintessence is an aspect in its purest form. It’s impossible to alchemize, it uses a resource that doesn’t exist, but you’re not supposed to create it. You’re supposed to combine it with other objects to make Aspect objects! The issue is getting Quint Codes in the first place. 

One way to get Quint Codes is by going into the House of Mirror on your dream moon, finding the one that shows your aspect, and then taking a picture of your aspect reflection with a Catpha Camera. This is easy and just needs a Catpha Camera (which, in my opinion, every player should have at least one) but also involves interacting with the house of mirror. Not to mention that you can only use it to get the codes for the Aspects with players in your session. 

Otherwise, Sburb does spawn items that use Quint Codes. Some Legendary weapons, sometimes one of the landmarks on a Land, small bits of jewelry sold by a consort for suspiciously high prices, that kind of thing. 

Addendum: YES, and Denizen weapons. But I don’t encourage ANYONE to try to use Denizen weapons, especially before the Denizen in question is dead. I think most Denizen weapons are that kind of ‘Legendary+’ quality with special rules that are a Bad Idea to replicate for some reason. As a general rule, get that weapon code if the Denizen gives you the weapon (which implies bad things itself) or after killing it. Otherwise you’re toeing the line on the Denizen insta-kill script. 

This is part of why Imp Hats are in such high demand: those little boss imps have hats with a Quintessence in the recipe, meaning that you can combine them with things to get aspect-imbued things (if a bit diluted). Plus, if you collect all the Imp Hats (one for each aspect) and overlap the punched cards for all, the punch result you can see is the Imp Hat, which is a knit beanie with an imp face on it. Pretty cute. More importantly, once you know what the imp hat code is, you can remove that from the cards to get Quint Codes. For some reason the punch pattern of a Quintessence will never overlap the punch pattern of the Imp Hat. 

Addendum: Yes, The Scottish Aspect Imp Hats do exist. It’s just that one of the basic abilities the hat gives is invisibility, and the Imp will try to be sneaky. Sneaky Imps will almost never attack, because you’re supposed to see them and call them out, which will basically never happen under a The Scottish Aspect Hat. So, basically, The Scottish Aspect Imps will sneak around until you leave the area and they despawn. It’s likely the biggest hurdle to the Imp Hat trick. 

Addendum 2: There are other items that give underlings Aspect powers, but they only spawn on Underworld underlings. Which is a crying shame because the Lich Phylacteries all look flipping amazing! However, the overlapping trick doesn’t work as consistently on those. And a lot of games don’t even get that far. Not to mention you need to first get underlings to spawn in the Underworld. 

Addendum 2 Addendum: There IS a bug where Underworld underlings can spawn just in underground areas, due to overlapping spawn zones, but it only kicks in when Underworld spawning is activated. Also, sometimes those areas will cause Angels to spawn in them during Land generation, which can be a nasty surprise. 

Addendum 3: Mutant imps in the bonus dungeon can use Imp Hats. They’re also much better with them than normal Imps. Thankfully they don’t spawn with them.

Addendum 3 Addendum: If you go far enough into the bonus dungeon to see Mutant Liches (I think they’re called ‘Reshaped Liches’, but whatever) and have Underworld spawning on, every single Mutant Lich will spawn with a random Phylactery. However, by then you’re basically waist-deep in Mutant Imps all the time, so call this ‘not an effective method for farming’ 

**Dumb Luck:** Sometimes when doing normal alchemization, you get an Infused item. The biggest example I know of is connected to Warhammer 40k: if you combine a basic chain-axe with a picture of a Khorne symbol, you get a Khornate Axe that is Rage-infused. For those of you without worlds with Warhammer, symbol of a fictional god+thing that fictional god is fond of=Holy item of fictional god with fitting Infusion. That kind of thing. Oftentimes puns are involved: I’ve also gotten a Khornate Axe from combining a chain axe with an ear of corn. 

The issue is that this is more or less a random Alchemy event, with all the trouble that causes. Just because an item is Aspect-Infused, for example, doesn’t mean it’s not Corrupted. 

##  **Infusion Default Passive Effects**

**Blood:** Lifesteal for weapons, increased damage resistance for armor. Blood Infusions can be made to have a community effect, but it’s tricky to set up and I don’t think it happens with default Infusions. 

**Breath:** Weapons will hit really hard, be easier to swing, and ranged weapons will have better range and projectile speed. Armor will be lighter and make you more dodgy.

**Doom:** Commonly poisons enemies or protects from poison, unfortunately I’m not sure if any enemy in the game has a poison effect. May also affect the magnitude of a doom prophecy on you?

**Heart:** Hard to say, mental fortitude, maybe? I just know that heart-infused stuffed animals seem more effective than heart-infused armor or weapons. 

**Hope:** Helps shrug off negative effects, weapons have knockback increased. Theories keep circulating that Hope-Infused items change Exp gains, but there’s no evidence to back that up. 

**Life:** Armor gives you regeneration, weapons have increased chance for crippling effects. The weapons can be kind of useful against carapacian agents or royalty, but Denizens will just laugh at you. 

**Light:** Improved accuracy on weapons, improved perception on armor. Light-infused glasses or contacts can help improve eyesight, no matter the wearer’s prescription. Sometimes they’re cheaper than a custom replacement, too. 

**Mind:** Weapons give you better awareness of your enemy (hard to explain but helpful,) and armor gives you better situational awareness. 

**Rage:** Big combat stat boost, but SHOULD NOT BE USED BY NON-RAGE PLAYERS. These items mess with you, make you want to use them more. However, if you are a Rage player, even non-combat items improve your ability to use them when imbued. 

**Space:** I don’t even know, the active abilities on space items are always pretty good but the passives are so passive I’m not sure what they do. I think it’s something like a % boost to all stats, but I’d need to check. 

**Time:** Weapons slow or even stop the enemy. Armor messes with tick speed, making effects on you last longer or shorter depending on the ability. 

Addendum: Or maybe it’s not a tick speed change and just normal duration modification. I don’t know anymore. 

**The Scottish Aspect:** Nothing useful, see below. 


	32. Random Notes-Do Not Alchemize List

##  **Do Not Alchemize List**

Look, even without Corruption risk, there’s some things you just don’t alchemize. They’re a bad idea no matter what. 

**Pumpkins:** Sburb has a bug and de-spawns Pumpkins or something? Pumpkin seeds are mostly safe, but pumpkin-themed stuff typically isn’t. It’s unclear whether Jack-O-Lanterns have the same problem. In any case, alchemizing pumpkins is basically like burning your grist. 

**Your Dreamself:** There’s a weird bug where you can get the Captcha code of your dreamself. Don’t mess with that. Just don’t. Yes, there’s lots of good (if weird) uses for your own code, but the Alchemy system doesn’t take to alchemizing dreamselves and dreamself-based objects too well. 

**Any Kind of Player Pendant:** Do you want to die? No? Don’t mess with the pendant. 

**Anything You Need To Use the Laserstation To Get:** The Intellibeam Laserstation lets players access the Captchalogue code to certain core game objects (and pumpkins). As a general rule, leave this thing (and any item that has no obvious code on the back of the card) alone. 

**The Scottish Aspect Quintessence:** Infused items seem to suffer the same despawning glitch as pumpkins. That or they wipe themselves from your memory like generic objects? In any case, if you want The Scottish Aspect-Infused items you’ll have to either use manual infusion or get pre-made ones from Sburb, the default The Scottish Aspect infusion is just bad. 

**Consorts:** Sure, getting the Consort equipment is basically free Land Rep, but the stats are abysmal for the cost and you need to actually do stuff with the equipment to get the free Rep. Other than that, any advanced alchemy operation involving a consort is liable to go weird. This stuff, at least, isn’t likely to kill your game. 

Addendum: If you DO use a consort in alchemy, be VERY careful not to punch the card with the consort in it. It doesn’t count as killing the consort, but the consort is still trapped in the card. In addition, since it doesn’t count as killing the consort, that consort will never re-spawn and you will permanently lose any quests connected to it. 

**Consort Skulls:** You can find these in some dungeons, the Psychoruins, or some randomly generated Crypt, Tomb, and Mausoleum buildings on some lands. They’re creepy. Usually I’m not the sort to call skulls creepy (they’re actually kind of cool) but Consort skulls seem to rotate to face you when you’re not in the room. I know it’s just a spoopy game script, but it’s still unnerving. Anyway, you combine a Consort skull with something and you get something that’s like Consort-based equipment but on top of the Land Rep boost Consorts will move away from you if you get too close. This makes getting and finishing quests really hard. 

Addendum: Welp, people have done datamining and there’s no re-positioning or rotation script connected to them. Instead, it’s a part of the Consort script. Isn’t that… nice? 

Addendum 2: Allegedly, combining a Consort skull and a live Consort gives you a full Consort skeleton. Kind of weird, now that I think about it I’ve never seen a full skeleton in a tomb or mausoleum, just the skulls and piles of generic bones. 

Addendum 2 Addendum: CONSORT SKELETONS ARE COMPLETELY MOBILE AND ACT LIKE THEY’RE ALIVE.

Addendum 2 Addendum 2 : and… they… give… quests? The heck? 

Addendum 2 Addendum 3 : I’m investigating now, might set up a full guide to skeletal consorts. 

Note to self: Delete this Addendum chain when I do that.


	33. Random Notes-Green Stuff

##  **Debug NPC and The Green Sun**

So, here’s a quick lesson in things that are a very important complete non-issue. 

In some versions of Sburb there’s a ‘First Guardian’ NPC that wields nigh-omnipotent power because reasons. It’s somehow connected to a giant green sun hanging out in The Furthest Ring the size of two universes. It’s speculated to be a debug feature, something the developers used for some reason and then never properly removed. Whenever you see a ‘do not Prototype’ list, the Debug NPC is near that top: It literally sets all the stats on everything affected by the Prototype code to the uppermost limit. Including the Black King and Queen. Nothing becomes undefeatable (‘Virus’ or Demon threats will still win most of the time) but you need something really absurd to beat them. Literally the only thing you can prototype that’s worse than the Debug NPC is a SBURB server disk, and that’s a REALLY close call. 

The Green Sun itself was kind of an odd landmark. In any session you could see it from, if you got a suitable craft for furthest-ring-travel and accelerated it to superluminal relativistic speeds (something that’s not only possible in Sburb but easier than a ringwraith fight) you will get there after a few years. If Paradoxical Simultaneity is on your side, you’ll get there the same time as someone else making the same trip. The theory is that then from there you could travel the correct direction and get to a different session (after a few more years). 

In effect, this all doesn’t matter. Time outside the medium is a giant mess, the reason that the Replayer community makes such a big deal about timetrav encryption is because it enforces something like linearity to the Replayer community. However, The Green Sun does not follow timetrav encryption, and as a result whether you can see the green sun from a given session is basically random. This implies one of two things: either one there’s a time before The Green Sun exists, or two there’s a time after The Green Sun goes out. Maybe both. In any case, if the Green Sun is never visible from your session, there’s no First Guardian. 

And that seems to be more and more common. Older replayers will talk about The Green Sun, but more and more new sessions don’t have it. There’s lots of references to it in some of the old replayer files, but a lot of new replayers (like myself) have never seen it. 

However, the disappearance of The Green Sun oddly co-insides with a deluge of new players (including myself). At the same time a lot of the big names in the archives are missing, and it seems like for a while there was very little if any new blood. There’s just a funny hole in replayer history that kind of co-insides with The Green Sun vanishing. There’s other odd reports, too: multicolored cracks in The Furthest ring, some kind of realital-gravitational singularity that there’s no information about, but those aren’t seen anymore, either.

I kind of wonder if version drift is at work. 

What I’m saying is, that we don’t know if there’s only one Furthest Ring. It’s possible there’s an infinite number of them, each one infinitely large, but with different (nonlinear) histories. Each version of The Furthest Ring contains Mediums for Sburb sessions, and the Replayer network is moving from one to the other in a nonlinear timey-wimey fashion. When you go into the final reward, and get stuck there, you’re technically no longer in the Medium: you’re somewhere else. From that somewhere else, who is to say you can’t get placed into a session that goes to a different Furthest Ring? That may be why some Replayers have vanished when they finish a session, they go to a different Furthest Ring instead of the one we’re in. 

Or maybe they actually get that reward. There’s no way to tell. 

In any case, I kind of keep an eye out whenever I get into a new session. If the Green sun can appear or go out, maybe something else can, too. 

That idea is one of the things that give me hope: The Furthest Ring is not the stable unchanging paraplane it seems to be. Stuff happens out there, and maybe someday something will happen that will let us all escape this hell. 

Addendum: A lot of the replayer ‘sites are contained on hosting servers floating in The Furthest Ring. If the replayer community is moving between multiple Rings, how are they reliably able to connect to the sites? 

No, yeah, I have no answer other than that that is nowhere near the biggest paradox in this situation.


	34. Random Notes-Spoopy Scawy Skeletons

##  **Skeletal Consorts**

If you combine a Consort skull and a living Consort, you get a Skeletal Consort. They’re like undead Consorts. They’re creepycute and adoraspooky, and they’re my new favorite thing in Sburb. 

**Basic Facts:** Skeletal Consorts mingle fine with other consorts. None of them seem to have any trouble getting along or notice anything odd. In addition, Skeletal Consorts are almost unkillable: They can get knocked apart, but after a minute or two they get right back up. They can get killed if they’re knocked apart too many times in quick succession, but the pause is long enough that most Underlings will wander off before they get back up. Skeletal Consorts do not affect Land Reputation, you can bash them or help them all you want and the other consorts won’t care. However, Skeletal Consorts do consider Land Rep in their interactions, and will react to you appropriately. 

**Quests:** Skeletal Consorts can give Quests. There are Penance Quests if you have bad enough Land Rep, yes, but since Skeletal Consorts don’t affect Land Rep there’s no reason to do them. Other Quests are typically the normal Consort mix, with a higher chance to point you toward Dungeons. Also, I think they’re working off of some removed features, because they often are halfway through some kind of unique dialogue and then stop suddenly to give a generic Quest. Odd. Overall, I’ve started using these to find dungeons more reliably. 

Addendum: They have a chance of giving you a quest for the Psychoruins, so be sure to keep an eye out so you don’t enter them on accident. 

**Consorts Do Not Belong There:** Skeletal Consorts seem to have no understanding of what a ‘dangerous’ area is compared to a ‘safe’ area. They will not object to being dropped in all kinds of wonky places. Dungeons? Fine. Earthsea Borealis? Fine. Bonus Dungeon? Fine. Psychoruins? Fine (you shouldn’t be in the psychoruins). Underworld? It’s a breach of The Law, but the consort doesn’t seem to care. In addition, Skeletal Consorts don’t have a ‘home’ spot, so they’ll happily follow you everywhere. Between that and their durability, they’re a little like the discount version of the Consort Pirate. 

Addendum: They will also follow around notable Consorts if given a chance. I’m not sure if this is only hard-wired Consort NPCs or if you can give a Consort a bandana and they’ll count. 

**Cheesing the Underworld:** When you’re working to get under The Law, Skeletal Consorts can be your secret weapon. Sure, placing them down (whether out in the open or in one of the landmarks) is a Law violation, but it’s possible and the Angels can’t get into the landmarks. From there, the Skeletal Consorts will actually give you quests, and since the Underworld only has so much content, they will always point you toward your FAKE house or one of the landmarks you haven’t vandalized yet. Sure, you’ll still need to escape from The Law now, but if you’re at loose ends you can try this. 

Addendum: for some reason Angels really hate Skeletal Consorts. If you’ve trespassed the law and you place one, the Angels typically go for it first. This can give you that edge you need to escape, but are you going to abandon your undead adventuring buddy? Besides, The Law doesn’t clear until the Consort is really-for-real dead, and that can take a while. 

Other than that, after you clear out the Angels you can place Skeletal Consorts down in the Underworld and populate it! They’ll even congregate in certain areas, talking about how they’re going to found a village there, and with the Planet Healer tools you have you can actually make them one! Sure, Skeletal Consorts are a little expensive to mass-produce, but I think it’s worth it to liven up the Underworld a little bit. 


	35. Random Notes-Just don't do this. Just don't.

##  **Secret Psychoruins Strat**

You people asked for this. Of course a game for teens choked with growing up metaphors has an optional area which makes you hallucinate horrific nightmares and tries to kill you. I wouldn’t recommend doing it. Even though the Psychoruins reward is consistently REALLY good, it’s rarely worth the trauma even so. Still, if you feel a need for Psychoruins loot, this is how I’d do it. 

**Setup**

  1. Have a stable game. If the reckoning could happen at any time, don’t go into the Psychoruins. 
  2. Have at least unlocked the Earthsea Borealis in the Planet Healer arc. The Psychoruins scales really well to your Echeladder rung, but things you’ve unlocked over Planet Healer can make a big difference. 
  3. HAVE THE GORRAM PLAYER PENDANT AND SONG OF LIGHT. If you listen to nothing else in this strat, listen to this: Never, ever turn the song of light off in the Psychoruins. Ever. 
  4. Be well-rested and well-fed. 
  5. Bring what food and water you can, and some kind of healing consumables. You might be in there a long time. 
  6. Alchemize an entire set of Welcome to Night Vale equipment. Trust me. 
  7. Your best non-WTNV equipment. 
  8. 5 to 10 Skeletal Consorts, all decked out in WTNV swag. 
  9. Your good luck charms
  10. Only ONE computer. 
  11. Everything else that seems like a good idea. 
  12. No other players are to go with you, under any circumstances
  13. Tell your friends you’re going into the Psychoruins and that if you’re not out within 3 days, they are to destroy the entrance (also tell them where it is on your land). They are not to ENTER, only to destroy the entrance. 



The Planet Healer unlocks and the Player Pendant with Song of Light are the generally-accepted base rules for Psychoruins delving. A lot of people will even say to go for the Skaia pendant and some progress in the Underworld arc, but I think that’s not needed. In theory, you can go into the Psychoruins as soon as you have the Song of Light and find the place, but the chances of the Psychoruins being accessible before you beat your denizen is something like 1 in 50. 

The core parts of this Strat are: 

  1. Player Pendant and Song Of Light, which will be on all the time in the Psychoruins, even if you want to sleep. ESPECIALLY if you want to sleep. 
  2. The three-day limit and no entering agreement from your friends. Really, even if you don’t use this strat, this and the Song of Light should be standard for any Psychoruins delving at all.
  3. An entire set of WTNV equipment, whatever you feel is really a key part of your loadout, alchemized with WTNV. Yes, some of these will be downgrades, which is also why you bring your Non-WTNV stuff. 
  4. The Skeletal Consorts, also in WTNV stuff. 



Three days, and then destroy? Why three days, you ask? Because the Psychoruins can be very big, and has clever ways of looping you around. If it’s big, two days should be plenty. A loop effect might also add some time. But if you don’t have it in three days something has definitely gone wrong.

Why destroy, you ask? Because if the Psychoruins entrance is destroyed, the Ruins itself stops functioning. The Nightmare script turns off, the treasure all vanishes, and the puzzles all pop open. It resumes functioning once the entrance recovers. This is a backup plan just in case. Yes, I know that the possibility of getting that badly lost in the Psychoruins is a slight one, but it does happen. Don’t forget, the story of One Week In The Psychoruins was real, even if the retelling was heavily altered by the poor player’s degraded sanity. This is why you need a stable game and a backup plan from your fellow players. If it seems like you’re missing, or dead, or an emergency happens in the greater session, they can blast the entrance and get you out of there. 

The WTNV equipment is brought along because, again, the nightmare script doesn’t like it for some reason. Won’t touch the stuff, and won’t put in hallucinations of the stuff. It’s an extra layer of defense, and in the Psychoruins you need every later you can get.

So, the core idea of this strat is that you kill everything in the Psychoruins that isn’t wearing WTNV swag. Consorts and Carapaces don’t spawn in the Psychoruins so you know they’re all fake, leaving Underlings, Players, and Scary Stuff. But! You know for a FACT that your fellow players are not to ENTER the Psychoruins, they are to DESTROY it. Anything in there that looks like another player is a nightmare. This is why it’s generally agreed that you don’t go into the Psychoruins with a buddy: the Nightmares love to get players to fight each other without either knowing it. Thankfully, this means that there’s no ‘enter only while alone’ limit on the Psychoruins, leading to Skeleton Cheese. 

Those Skeletal Consorts are your secret weapon. You know how some people talk about using bugged invisible consorts to beat puzzles? We’re doing that with Skeletons. Skeletal consorts don’t flip out in dungeons, meaning that they’ll do what they’re told and help you with puzzles. They’re durable and self-reviving, so while they can be attacked enemies can’t just murderize them. HOWEVER, be sure to specify that they are to follow your orders IF AND ONLY IF you have your player pendant glowing. This will help prevent your skelebuddies from wandering off after nightmare versions of you. You’ll still likely lose track of some, but that’s why you have spares.

But wait! The Nightmares! The Psychoruins surely will use that to its advantage and mock you with fake Skeletal Consorts! Yep, that’s why our skeleton buddies are all decked out in WTNV, too. The Psychoruins won’t mimic their duds, and you can tell which ones are the fakes. And if you bonk a skelebuddy by accident, no Land Rep penalty. Again, the entire point is to kill EVERYTHING not wearing WTNV swag. 

It’s unclear whether the ‘Underlings’ in the Psychoruins are actual underlings or some kind of special nightmare enemy (they never drop grist) but in any case you have your best weapons with you if you come up against something actually dangerous (which you will). Between them, the not-players, and whatever special horrific monster is waiting for you, this is still going to be a sizable challenge. 

Finally, don’t pick up any food or drink on the ground (even if you dropped it) and turn off your only computer before you go in. That way, if you hear the familiar bing of your chat program, you know that it’s not real. It’s the ruins trying to mess with you: You only have one computer and it’s off. 

Addendum: Don’t make a WTNV computer. Just. Don’t. 

It’ll still be a horrific traumatizing experience that lives on in your nightmares forever, but this strat can undermine a lot of the more diabolical things that the place is capable of. In the end, you’ll grab that sweet legend loot, the Nightmare script will deactivate, you gather up your wayward bony friends on the way out, traipse through your land with your new toy and skull band like a Night Vale pride parade, tell your bony buddies what a god job they all did, take all the WTNV swag off and lock it away so you never have to look at it again, flop on your bed, and cry yourself to sleep. 

I keep my pendant glowing the full three days, just in case. 

Just in case. 


End file.
